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The Field of the Hidden Treasure 



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THE FIELD 



OF THE 



HIDDEN TREASURE 



BY 

SARAH CROSSE 



«£ 



BOSTON. MASSACHUSETTS 

S. R. Crosse, Publisher 

mdccccv 



UBBARYof OONGrtESS 

Two Copies rietaivej 

WAR 17 1905 

Oopypgnt tntry 

SUSS £t AAc Mot 

//t>X $6 

COPY tf. 



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" The kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure hidden in 
the field ; which a man found, and hid ; and in his joy he 
goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field." 
— {Matthew 13 : 44. 



TO 
E. C. R. AND G. P., 
TWO ANGELS WALKING IN 
THE GARDEN WITH SPIRIT, 
AND WALKING WITH 
THEIR BELOVED HERE. 



Copyright, 1905 
By SARAH CROSSE 

Published, March, 1905 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

THE HIDDEN TREASURE I 

THE INDWELLING REMINDER 32 

THE WILL 61 

ACTION 9 6 

ONE AND ANOTHER . 130 

YOU 155 

INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE 182 

THE SENTIENCY OF ATMOSPHERE .... 204 



THE HIDDEN TREASURE. 



I 

THE vagueness which environs a long-departed 
age leaves the mind of the present generation 
obscure regarding the personality of a Homer. 
Nevertheless, the higher criticism of the present 
age, arguing whether the work should be attrib- 
uted to a single man whose genius rhapsodized 
his lays so impressively, so passionately, that 
they clung to the listening ear a rhythmic, 
entrancing fancy, or depicts the composite fancies 
of several men instead, having been finally gathered 
by some appreciative, poetic soul, and accredited to 
the visionary measure of a single heart, does not 
greatly interfere with the pleasure one has in 
reviewing the lines of either the Iliad or the 
Odyssey. For we all believe that an asonian 
ravage dooms all personality to either effacement 
or doubtful remembrance. The mere matter of a 
lesser extended remoteness by a few hundred 
years surely has nothing to do with this sig- 
nificant fact that Jesus of Nazareth retains, on 
the contrary, the embodiment of the present day 
Christ in all its demonstrableness for all who 



2 The Hidden Treasure 

learn of his Nature from his works. It would be, 
none the less, as impossible to write the story 
of his life truly as to tell the story of Homer — 
man or men. No one has succeeded in doing 
this satisfactorily to others, and those who have 
tried to do so have not probably found their 
efforts self-convincing ; have not found in their 
results the true heart-finish that they would so 
gladly have given, simply because they failed 
to interpret his life as spiritually as it was in 
their soul to do. We may speak of his work, 
or of his teaching, but whenever any one attempts 
to portray his life as that of an historical person- 
age with the weakness due to engrossing human 
characteristics, nearly every reader will feel that 
the writer had not the key to his life, or else 
that the limitations of the human language made 
it impossible to give the spiritual glow to what 
Jesus was in himself, in his blessed individuality. 
For himself, we note, he effaced every possible 
personal distinction by absorbing himself in the 
Father. 

We can any of us easily feel his presence in 
our midst to-day, although probably no one ever 
attempts to depict within the confines of his 
imagination the sartorial effect of the Christ in 
modern custom-made clothes — even though claim- 
ing that Jesus was human, and, because of his 
humanity, a great comfort to man. One can 



The Hidden Treasure 3 

never so picture his Christ : for the embodiment 
of one's Christ is of permanent concreteness, is of 
imperishable substance. But the spiritual absorp- 
tion of Jesus is felt, and the mantle of the Holy 
One becomes the radiating Essence of the ever- 
living Christ. Surely to feel this spiritual absorp- 
tion raises one from the abysmal depths of despair, 
of helplessness, of want, of suffering, to the 
Light-centre of true Thought, whence the living 
world is manifesting itself in the gladness and 
thanksgiving of a consciously abundant Being. 
For merely to exist on the outside of things is 
not the same as to live consciously within the 
Holy Centre of Being whence Love irradiates its 
World. The living delight coming from a close 
intercommunion with Jesus the Christ is inde- 
scribable, although one should surely feel that 
it is always flowing, a heavenly rapture, through 
the Soul of the Universe, through all Nature, 
and so always flowing as one's own happy 
response to the irresistible Atmosphere of Christ, 
since one's own perception of this Atmosphere, 
and one's own consciousness of its ever-abiding 
Presence evoke and permanently substance it for 
him. It is in this way, surely, that one perceives 
Life as Christ — Spirit — in everything that hath 
been made. 



The Hidden Treasure 



II 



As one's perception of the Christ effaces the 
barriers of intervening centuries, so it brings the 
incidents of the Last Supper to a point for a clearer 
spiritual focussing. It was a solemn occasion. The 
Master was rounding his teaching for his great 
demonstration. Whatever he said to his disciples 
we really cherish as advice to us, even when we 
are loth to admit that some charge has a special 
significance for us, reasoning that, because of our 
innocence or our ignorance, or because of the 
spirituality of our purpose which makes every 
intention divine, it need not apply to us, since, 
although we may fall far short of perfecting our 
purpose, we are yet confident that the Spirit is 
blessing our effort, and that the work we are 
trying to do will know its completeness whenever 
it is ready. For we have learned that there is 
nothing with which we are dealing — with which 
we have, perhaps, unconsciously to deal — which 
should not respond from its true knowledge of 
Being spontaneously. There is one charge, how- 
ever, that the human soul interprets as an accusa- 
tion : " Verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall 
betray me." Yet as Wisdom through man's diviner 
sense enlightens one to a completer, a more intelli- 
gent, knowledge of Jesus' purpose and work, the 
pitiful estimate of a human Jesus vanishes without 



The Hidden Treasure 5 

leaving a temptation either to condemn or to condone 
a miserably human Judas, which temptation, while 
it lasts, obviously undermines one's truer estimate 
of Christ. That the betrayal was nefarious in itself, 
one necessarily admits. There is, moreover, the 
conviction, humanly inborn, that the penalty for the 
betrayal of Christ is, after all, one's unconscious- 
ness of Self, or rather an ignorance, brought to pass 
by an unwise investment of this Self in human life. 
Certainly the manner of paying the penalty has 
evoked, either consciously or unconsciously, an un- 
ceasing argument concerning Life. 

The response to this charge was precisely the 
same from each of the disciples, "Is it I?" Few, 
indeed, are they who do not, more spontaneously 
than they are aware, fit themselves to this phrase 
of judgment. " Is it I ? " or, " It is not I ! " is the 
question or disclaimer, although the question, hon- 
estly asked of one's self, helps one far more than 
the disclaimer, since to excuse one's self is practi- 
cally to accuse this self. But he who honestly ques- 
tions receives the answer as his own soul's verdict. 
He then looks upon the old world of good intentions 
frustrated, and upon the old self as though it were 
the citizen of Dreamland, but sees nothing in any of 
it which reminds him in any way of the just meas- 
ure of himself. Deprived of the intelligence where- 
with he had invested it, the old imperception of 
self is no longer an accusation, although later he 



6 The Hidden Treasure 

learns that what seemed a winnowing process, dur- 
ing hours of great apparent suffering, when the chaff 
went into the flames for burning, was a work of 
more positive value than he then knew. The indi- 
vidual was spiritualizing his thought, but the incon- 
gruousness of things was entirely fictive. Life had 
never been stated in such dreadful nasal tones. 
The truly cosmic Atmosphere reveals things as they 
are: naked facts without a single fig-leaf — facts 
not concealed by so much as a transparency. 



Ill 

EARLIER in the disciples' story of their journey 
with the Master, it is a matter of simple record that 
he spoke to the multitudes in parables, and that his 
disciples "followed him into the house' ' that he 
might explain the meaning of words which were 
mystical to them. Their idea of Heaven had doubt- 
less associated itself with every conceivable human 
grandeur and magnificence, but he had likened 
Heaven to the simple incidents of life, to the 
power which might be seen and felt in their daily 
walks and works, although some of his parables had 
been given to illustrate the carelessness of men as 
shown by their utter disregard of a truly spiritual 
service ; a service which, if voluntarily continued, 
would lead them to the spontaneous expression of 
their spiritual Nature, solely through their compre- 



The Hidden Treasure y 

hension of it as Universal Nature. He explained 
these parables simply enough to his disciples, al- 
though to us who have had the informing mind of 
the centuries instructing us, they appear simple 
enough in their wording as they passed from his lips 
to the eager hearing of the people gathered for his 
inspiring word. But we know from experience how 
earnest a real student is in his desire to get all that 
is essential from a lesson, and how he expects his 
teacher to strain and sift the teacher's own inmost 
thought in behalf of the student's comprehension, 
and, particularly, can we of this day appreciate this 
pursuit of the disciples as it has brought to us also 
the parables which followed his explanation. 

There is a proverb which reads, " Whose bread 
I have, his song I sing." And this first Parable to 
his disciples, which follows his interpretation of the 
previous parables to the people massed to hear him, 
is to him who construes it happily, and so construes 
it with a constant interest, that bread indeed which 
retains its stimulus for him who perceives its mean- 
ing, so that his whole life becomes to him a song 
for the One whose ever-sustaining hand supplies 
him with this Bread which never gets stale from 
age, nor gets unseasonable to one's taste. 

For this Parable is not the vagarious production 
of a mystic enwrapped in his fancy. One can in- 
stantly perceive the spontaneity of a thought clothed 
with Wisdom, and, moreover, perceive that this 



8 The Hidden Treasure 

thought itself is Wisdom's vehicle of expression. 
Read, then, this Parable, and may you have that 
inward peace which surely comes to him who lives 
its meaning from his soul, so to interpret his life — 
all life — divinely. For herein is the promise which, 
understood, carries the Christ fulfilment for us. 

" The kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure 
hidden in the field ; which a man found and hid : 
and in his joy he goeth and selleth all that he hath, 
and buyeth that field." 
' The Gospel narrative does not say that each man 
questioned concerning this man of the Parable, " Is 
it I ? " Certainly it was not because of any diffi- 
dence, or because of any sense of humility ; it was 
not because of any modest self-shrinking, since none 
of them would have refused seats in the Kingdom 
beside the Christ, nor was it because of any disbe- 
lief in their natural power, that they failed to in- 
quire, each for himself, if this man was present in 
their midst. Probably no such question shaped 
itself, because they perfectly well knew that each 
man was to be this very man to himself, the man 
who was to do the whole work singly in himself, 
although the work of self-comprehension was to be 
finished in the single Field of Thought for all ; to be 
finished as that self-comprehension which should 
express itself as the Divine Unit, and so express 
itself with the conscious Might of the Heavenly 
Will. It is not probable that the disciples found 



The Hidden Treasure g 

any analogy between this Parable and the charge 
at the Last Supper. Still, this accusation must have 
been an antithetic reminder of all that this Parable 
had implied. 

That this Treasure was absolute in itself, one 
understands. That it was before man was ap- 
pears from the rendering of the Parable, and that 
the previous character of man was indeterminate 
also appears. That a man found this Treasure 
would show that he had first lost it, that he had 
forgotten it, or that, for a season at least, had been 
oblivious to its worth. Yet there it was already in 
the Field, which we understand the giver of the 
Parable to have regarded as the Field of Thought. 
As I understand it, this treasuring should be re- 
garded as the individual treasuring of one's con- 
scious divinity. 

IV 

IS there anything so obviously hidden as Truth 
appears within that which one calls his soul, his 
heart, his mind, until the beautiful day comes when 
he most ardently desires to live its Life truly, be its 
exponent in all things, acknowledge it as his Cre- 
ator, as his living inspiration, be to it its child ? 
And thus it becomes the only passion of his life. 
He seeks it for its revelation. He adores it with 
his returning love. Now its Life is his responsive 



io The Hidden Treasure 

breath. Now its Being is his heart's pulsation. 
Now its Power is manifesting itself through him as 
his exhaustless strength. Now its Intelligence is 
to him Wisdom directing his life, that Wisdom in 
which he absolutely trusts. And now its Soul is 
the Heaven within him. His trust in it is, whether 
he appear waking or sleeping, his always conscious 
prayer, because of this trust's wakeful spontaneity. 
But until this day of constant trust comes, this 
day of an ardently engrossing spiritual desire, this 
day of a fervid heart, and so of a passion that lights 
all companionship for him with the glow of Spirit's 
eternal light, there have doubtless been many days 
of sad experiences during which he has, at intervals, 
prayed to this Truth as to the Lord of his soul, and 
during which he has poured his soul out in feverish 
periods of desire for that Power to manifest itself 
which would help either himself or another whom he 
loves with tenderest affection, as nothing else could 
help. Yet these days of importunate woe had added 
themselves to many days of varying forceful import, 
until he had come to a day when he was not sure 
within himself whether Spirit had ever opened its 
succoring love to him ; whether he had really so 
trusted Heaven as to feel its Power exercised in his 
behalf, or matters had eased themselves on their 
own account. Thus has he come to the day of 
spiritual accounting to himself. For the crucial 
hour came like a thief in the night, and found him 



The Hidden Treasure u 

not watching the Presence within his soul ; he was 
not, therefore, self-protected, did not have that in 
his thought which prevented a marauding fear either 
for himself or for another dearer than himself, al- 
though he had been dimly aware that certain afflict- 
ive consequences pursued his days until life seemed 
inwardly a perpetual conflict ; until he felt that all 
he had was that which he had brought a stranger to 
this phase of being — to which he had only added 
the unhallowed knowledge of evil — while he now 
stood before the gate of another phase very doubtful 
of its favor. He tried to see some light within his 
human soul, but found only a Stygian darkness, from 
which no heavenly Voice greeted him with its divine 
comforting ; his theology, a dead letter, had no 
illumining ray. Previously there had been seasons 
when he had presumed to be somewhat self-asser- 
tive respecting what stood him for faith. He now 
realizes his former presumption, and knows that a 
kind of faith, which could be so conveniently rele- 
gated to oblivion in less exigent moments, could 
never be summoned as a substitute for Knowledge 
in an hour apparently bereft of everything sound 
and good. If, however, he did not find in dogma 
that for which he was seeking, in his despair he 
feels the quickening knowledge that he is standing 
before the door of his real thought. Can he enter 
in to take possession of what should be consciously 
his ? Is this door open or closed ? What was this 



12 The Hidden Treasure 

Being which came with him as himself ? What now 
is its consistency ? One is sometimes very curious 
about himself. Still he reasons that this self could 
not have been causeless, although it has seemed to 
him to have needed protection from the very mo- 
ment when he became its guardian and sponsor. It 
has been this self, surely, which has responded to 
his happiness, and which, alas, has known suffering 
through him. Why there should have been any 
response to happiness at all is a mystery, but why 
the suffering should have obtained is obvious. For 
the uncertainty of one's happiness accounts for the 
latter condition partially ; yet one rightly believes 
that suffering often results directly from harvesting 
a crop from seeds sown by his own unwisdom, but 
oftener results from the sad fruitage of some seed 
sown and germinated sons ago, for which sowing, 
however, the individual ignorantly declares himself 
irresponsible, although it is now self-assertively 
springing forth in the form of disease, of criminal 
fancies that seem to urge him to deeds that his soul 
loathes, to habits which the most earnest protesting 
against will not dissuade and despatch, and which 
the will seems unable to rout even by a determined 
siege. His self, therefore, appears as a double con- 
sciousness, or at least two-sided, neither side of 
which proves trustworthy, as each always requires 
the other to continue a conflict which never results 
in absolute peace. 



The Hidden Treasure 13 

So the moment comes when endurance seems at 
an end ; when the will to battle with propensities, 
which come trooping each for predominance, seems 
strengthless ; when life obviously has not unfolded 
anything towards perfecting its earlier promise. 
The dust from life's battle has tainted and ob- 
structed Heaven's breath in one's nostrils. At least 
so one has despairingly believed. And often has 
one said that life is not worth living at such a price. 
There had doubtless been, for a too brief moment, 
an apparent suspension of hostilities, which could 
scarcely be regarded even as an armistice; but of 
peace, real peace, without some reminder of a truce 
suggestive of a resumption of conflict, has there ever 
been such a moment ? Even of the self, could any- 
thing positive be told ? That it had being, that it 
has being, that it is not all a dream, some terrifying 
nightmare at times, one has, perhaps, occasionally 
affirmed for his faith's sake, or, perhaps, rather for 
the sake of an appearance of faith ; and often has 
one presumptuously affirmed with a self-conscious 
piety that, as his life has a beginning here, it must 
also have a hereafter — illogical reasoning, surely. 
Yet from such an inner premise one has reached 
no positively satisfactory inner conclusion. So the 
years have gone with their periods of stress and 
unrest, although with possibly less urgent days 
intervening. By stimulating with the excitement of 
venture, alternating with seasons of enforced sloth, 



14 The Hidden Treasure 

the surface tone of life has been somehow main- 
tained, despite a grumbling undertone, but, except 
during the oblivious hours, one has always known 
that torrent of argument within which no effort of 
the human will can ever prevent. This argument 
has had an unholy monopoly of his hearing, so to 
paralyze his natural spontaneity as to have fettered 
his hand that it failed his best ; so to tie his tongue 
as to have prevented its delivering itself of the 
heavenly Word intelligently. This argument has 
seemed to benumb his faculties so that the Word has 
missed its definiteness in his life ; so that it has 
always seemed expressing itself just beyond the 
boundary-line set by this infernal argument, the 
Word that one believes, despite all this reasoning, 
has a circumference of its own which should be vis- 
ible ; the Word which one believes should be heard, 
— even more, believes should be tangible. 



DOUBTLESS there had been many days of wan- 
dering while one occasionally saw Truth as in a mir- 
ror darkly, but now he would efface all that which 
had so veiled his vision as to prevent a sustained 
viewpoint, as to obscure a glorious perspective. He 
would now see the glory of the Spirit with his trans- 
figured sense imaging the selfsame glory. So al- 
though he had slept and risen night and day to the 



The Hidden Treasure 15 

dream of a life indefinite, and therefore uncertain, 
yet this crucial day of his dream brings him to the 
comfort and happiness of the wakeful knowledge 
that he has already known precisely how the reality 
of Life would flower within his consciousness when- 
ever he would willingly turn his whole heart to the 
Husbandman for the spiritual nourishing of Life. 
For he now understands clearly that what had 
hitherto seemed the battle-ground of a dual con- 
sciousness, contracting his mentality within narrow 
lines, the limitations of which he had declared im- 
passable, was merely an illusion of contradictory 
senses, each corroborating one's own evidence of 
the instability of all things, while these senses 
were likewise an illusion, a figment of fancy — for- 
tunately of fancy uncreate. 

But this day which always should have been con- 
sciously his own, the day to which he has prefer- 
ably allowed suffering to drive him, since it could 
always have been happily his, this beautiful day is 
now really his — both now and forever his very 
own — this glorious day which shows him some- 
thing of the splendor of the true Field of Thought. 
For here is the Field, the shining Field, containing 
the entire Treasure of Life, which he must surely 
possess, must really make wholly his own. That 
this is no chimera he absolutely knows. But he 
must secure it whole to himself. Moreover, he 
knows that he must keep his vision untarnished by 



1 6 The Hidden Treasure 

fancy so that this Treasure shall always fill his per- 
spective with its radiance. So he hides it in the 
Field where it belongs : for he cannot take it away ! 
It is as though it would not bear transplanting into 
a field of fancy. From the first moment of his dis- 
covery he has had a dim idea why this transplant- 
ing cannot be done. He, moreover, is quite aware 
that, until he has fully paid for this Treasure, it will 
be at least partially concealed by him. None the 
less, he has it now to enjoy. Its wealth is his to 
use for the absolute good of Life to-day, for him to 
expend in deeds of heavenly love, for him to pay for 
the redemption of truest friendship, and for the fur- 
ther acquisition of this blessed Knowledge. It is, 
moreover, his to use in payment for the Field. Now 
his efforts are hallowed ; he knows them to be holy, 
and, therefore, blameless, for his acquisition proves 
the Heaven within : will prove itself his ever true 
Consciousness. For this Treasure in the Field, from 
the first moment of enlightenment, he has known to 
be Spirit's imagery, that he had believed lost, to him, 
lost to man, from the creation of the world ; but he 
is now acquainting himself with it as the Holy Self- 
hood, the Immortal Being, of every one. 

VI 

ONE may call this Treasure Christ. One may 
call it Spirit's Nature in man, assert it as the only 
Nature to manifest, even assert it as the only Nature 



The Hidden Treasure iy 

manifested, but the true Self will never be under- 
stood merely by its classification, merely by calling 
it names. An abstraction will not buy the Bread of 
Life; nor will it quicken one into that divine com- 
prehension of one's Nature which is the baptism of 
Christ, the SouFs real christening. The Treasure 
in the Field is hidden with Christ in God, so its 
safety is insured. It will not pay the wage of a 
mercenary for personal striving, but will so illumine 
the inner sense that one can stay conscious of the 
amplitude of the Power within, which is his to use 
on all occasions. For never will this Treasure be- 
tray one by any lack of worth, by any weakness of 
character in return for one's trust ; nor can it be 
betrayed in its individuality, in its integrity, by the 
defaulting of men and women. Although it cannot 
be transplanted from its native Field into the sem- 
blance of a field, it can yet so radiate itself as to fill 
the entire range of one's vision, even so fill one's 
vision that he will not believe it to be concealed 
from others. 

So towards the possession of this Field one will 
gladly give everything one has — even one's best- 
loved. One can withhold nothing — not even his 
old sense of life. Yet the price to be paid may seem 
but slowly earned. Even when one feels that he 
can surely call this Field his own, he will, perhaps, 
believe it somewhat difficult to convince others that 
his Field really exists, or that it can consciously be 



18 The Hidden Treasure 

as much theirs as his. This is when one is entering 
into the established sense of pure Being, when one 
perceives the heavenly grandeur which fills all 
Being. One is often aware — too well aware — 
that his hand points but feebly to the Light this 
Treasure holds for every man, whereas he would 
have the written words persuasive, convincing, a 
spiritual stimulus for the soul of every creature. 
Yet he is also aware how unavailing self-reproach 
would prove. The way to a true self-comprehen- 
sion cannot be opened to others through a delirium 
of their emotions by a form of hysteria in him. The 
affairs of one's own soul are — should be — com- 
posed according to the divine order of Being, if one 
would possess that poise which only can keep this 
Treasure one's very own always ; if one is to have 
that happiness in one's self which is essential to 
one's unity with others within the happy commun- 
ion of real Thought. One would not willingly have 
one's former conception of life a merely abeyant 
memory ; one would, on the contrary, have all that 
was unnatural wholly effaced. From a previous ex- 
perience one has thoroughly learned that one may 
stand before another as a mere negative representa- 
tive of a certain race, or nation, with characteristics 
so impressed by the psychic qualities pertaining 
thereto that another, although of an alien race or 
nation, may accurately classify him at once, while 
he would immediately find himself possessed of the 



The Hidden Treasure ig 

same complimentary knowledge ; or, rather, this 
knowledge would be complimentary were it not for 
the racial and national egotism of each. All this 
might prove difficult to unlearn were he again to 
subject himself voluntarily to the repeated impres- 
sions of the old fanciful imagery ; but the price of 
his Treasure will prove elusive and so difficult to 
earn if he image else than divinity in his thought, 
this image which is the true likeness of the Christ, 
of God, in every man — even more, in every crea- 
ture, as one now realizes — when each shall likewise 
comprehend what the true realization of Life in- 
cludes. And with this last knowledge comes the 
finality, the full finish of his conviction. His Treas- 
ure is universal; the Universe is all his own, since 
he is one with it — within the Divine Unit. It is 
his to enjoy infinitely. From it he derives strength, 
peace, rest, and that medicine which is for the heal- 
ing of all nations and things. The elementary world 
ceases to exist ; the fundamental alone concerns 
him. For him there are no longer nations, princi- 
palities, or kingdoms, to congest his mentality with 
fancies, morbid, or tentatively pleasant. His previ- 
ous false conception of life was never truly ani- 
mated ; never had the real breath of Life, as Spirit 
had never pervaded it with the heavenly Intelli- 
gence, had never let the Light of Omniscience shine 
within it ; for the heavenly Spirit has never had any 
knowledge of its supposititious existence. 



20 The Hidden Treasure 

VII 

ONE understands now why the Ear of Heaven 
had seemed so indifferent to all his pains and per- 
plexities, although he had sometimes reverently 
tried to excuse its apparent preoccupation and inat- 
tention to his hourly needs by some totally inade- 
quate formula for justifying the Almighty. Elisha's 
God neither slumbered nor slept, but one had some- 
times suspected one's self of sacrificing before the 
altar of Baal. But now one is sure that it was he 
who was slumbering, and that the heavenly Spirit is 
not really the idol of dreams. One knows precisely 
how Truth's adherents keep their consciousness 
alight, waking or sleeping ; one moreover knows 
that the living Soul of man never sleeps. It is an 
undebatable knowledge with one now that the pact 
of Life is to be kept within the individual ; that one 
is even now individual — undivided in sense and 
power. One's Life one gladly knows to be the Spirit 
increate. What one has to be within one's self is 
this Spirit's response to its Own perfect Nature. 
This Nature only is what one is receiving through- 
out one's life ; therefore is it precisely what one 
should be returning throughout Life. But this return 
does not doom one to a passive mentality. One 
has no occasion for striving, however ; let one then 
lay down one's arms. But one does not lie down 
with one's arms. There is else to do than fighting. 



The Hidden Treasure 21 

Peace, heavenly Peace, hath its active office. To 
speak with its Voice necessarily needs the attuning 
of one's own soul to its divine harmony. This is 
the reverent service of Heaven's choir, the hosts' 
adoration of the Host here and now. And the price 
of this Treasure is to be paid constantly with the 
adoring presentment of one's self. 

For one now there is the single interest in Life — 
the simple interest, indeed. Self-regard has be- 
come the universal regard. One's Treasure fills 
the whole Field. It is the Treasure with the Voice 
which really has the exclusive possession of every 
man's thought. Its divine sweetness is in every 
one's ear. It speaks the Word which is the Life of 
the Universal Soul. It is the utterance of the Mind 
which is self-existent. It is the Mind which be- 
speaks the hearing, the Mind which is both mes- 
sage and response in the World-in-visible ; the 
beautiful World which forever abides within one's 
spiritual vision, and which images itself visibly as 
the Soul's embodiment through every man's per- 
spective. And as one thus purchases with one's 
consecration one's true thought, one comprehends 
that this is the only Treasure of Life, since as the 
imagery of Spirit it reveals Life, real Life, through 
one and to one. Others may not appear to see 
one's possession, solely because they do not see it 
as their own; but one's knowledge of it as theirs 
will keep from one the inner reproach of being a 



22 The Hidden Treasure 

selfish egotist ; while one's efforts to help others to 
the selfsame knowledge will prevent the old argu- 
ment from resuming its sway, suggested as it would 
surely be, were one not actively helpful, through 
every channel of service by those whose miserable 
condition is the result of a partial unconsciousness 
of this Treasure, which happily could be at once 
consciously theirs. Their apparently dim-lighted way 
one had once accepted as one's own, but now to 
one it has ceased to be the way through which any 
one has necessarily to struggle. In order to help 
others, one therefore cannot concede the point that 
the way to Truth through weakness and dissension 
is easier than the direct way, entered into imme- 
diately. Nevertheless, one must not compromise 
one's own integrity by a season of prevarication 
and equivocation with others. Neither their fancies 
nor any of one's own can touch one's interest to 
bewilder one with these fancies' assumption of 
power. One knows that one would prove neglect- 
ful of all others were one to hold less than an up- 
right thought for a single friend ; or were one to yield 
indolently to a suggestion to spiritualize slowly, by 
temporizing frequently, while leading others to the 
clearly-lighted Field. Another may assume that he 
would preferably have this Light dawn slowly on 
his consciousness, but one soon learns that the na- 
tive intelligence of the other is right along demand- 
ing that he shall not agree with another's weakness, 



The Hidden Treasure 2} 

and that the other is ready to condemn him were he 
so to do. From one's own efforts one quickly learns 
that a slow progressiveness only increases suffering. 
This was also noted before his day : 

" Consult thy knowledge, that decides 
That as each thing to more perfection grows, 
It feels more sensibly both good and bad." 

More than this, one has learned that one is abso- 
lutely responsible for this Treasure in every one, in 
everything, and that if one were to conceal it from 
men in themselves, one would then be hiding one's 
self from the Christ in God. Therefore, not in this 
manner does one willingly compromise one's integ- 
rity so to obscure for one's self one's title to this 
Field of Thought. One's Treasure will always be 
to one that single viewpoint which must be to one 
Absolute Truth itself, whence one then can see only 
the Divine Light shining in others. So one must 
not permit the derision, the indifference, the reluc- 
tant efforts, of others, to affect the directness of 
one's own course. 

Otherwise, throughout the World of Appearances 
would one hear a voice hawking the price of mem- 
ories to be paid for with blood and tears ; of a Phle- 
gethen clamoring for its effacement in a Lethe. So 
one must be true to the perfect vision of Life, hear 
only the Voice proclaiming the integrity of the in- 
create, and therefore indestructible, in all that hath 



24 The Hidden Treasure 

been made. In every individual, in every sign of 
Life, one can so transfigure one's sight that it will 
clearly see that which has hitherto appeared un- 
seen, and thus unseen because concealed by the 
uncreate fancies, often appearing as miscreate. 
One can feel the Spirit of the heavenly hosts pul- 
sating with love through the heart of this Spirit's 
World. One can hear the Word of the Spirit of the 
hosts breathing itself through all. So one is con- 
scious of living in an atmosphere which restores 
every valley and every mountain to its normal 
plane, which attracts the crookedly diverging men- 
tality to its straight course, and which is quickening 
man — the angel — forever, despite his inconstancy, 
to the spiritual desire of Life, while it is giving him 
free access to all that is blessed. 



VIII 

ONE takes possession of his Treasure provision- 
ally at first, yet he does not conceal it because 
of any fear lest others shall wrest it from him. 
For although he would gladly interpret it to every 
one, it is, nevertheless, concealed until he has paid 
its price with the knowledge of the true Self, 
with the knowledge of the true Soul, which con- 
cealment will continue, at least partially, until he 
has put himself entirely into his acquisition of this 
knowledge of Spirit within himself. Perhaps one 



The Hidden Treasure 25 

will at first sadly note the difficulty one has in 
announcing his possession. One's language even 
conceals one's title to it, as it at first appears only 
able to translate a credited riddle of the soul in 
epigrams. So, although the whole Field of Thought 
is open to one, the Treasure of Self seems only 
weakly to appear. One is one's self aware that 
one is not presenting it in the fulness of its divinity, 
and so in its spiritual comeliness. The masque of 
personality, that one seems to wear, contradicts the 
beautiful individuality which one would have seen 
and felt instead. One's tongue and pen both seem 
restrained by a rebellious, an untutored, thought. 

But when apart from the personality of others, 
one glories in one's thought aglow with the 
heavenly Light. For then one's thought wings it- 
self, aware that it is carrying the Morning Star. 
One's thought thus covers the entire spiritual 
creation, carried as it is in the heavenly silence 
by the whole spiritual creation. The Spirit dwells 
herein, but to the spiritually conscious creation 
it is not so much a revelation of the Divine Self- 
hood as it is a spontaneous outburst of natural 
delight, a perpetual glorification of the hosts' embod- 
iment in Light — Knowledge. One understands, 
without having any call to experimental knowledge 
derived from some germinating tests with bacteria, 
that the gates of the heavenly Field are wide open 
forever, while the Spirit is emanating itself as Light 



26 The Hidden Treasure 

— Omniscient Good — so that every thought is 
open to one, without any vagueness or concealment, 
and, therefore, without any diseased sense of life. 
And so one realizes the glory of the perfect Day, the 
last and only Day, of which the Spirit is the Light 
Everlasting. 

Yet one learns that this Field of Thought will 
never be permanently his until one has united one's 
self with the hosts angelic, entitled to the same 
spiritual expression, to the same selfhood. One is 
not offered stairs by which to climb to glory. Just 
at first one's face shines transfigured by one's con- 
sciousness of the Light beaming through one, and one 
feels one's self transported to some spiritual height, 
whence one looks down upon the woes of men and 
their hapless ignorance of the Divine Presence 
dwelling within their common, single-day Soul. But 
along with one's truer vision has come an apparent 
sensitiveness of sight upon which is reflected the 
distorted views of man as one beholds their needs. 
It is as though a processional train of motives, dis- 
turbed by doubts, and despairing of any fixed place 
for demonstration, was trying to counterfeit Truth 
by presenting its unholy phenomena as real to one's 
inspection ; a sort of Satan, posing as apologetic, but 
inclined to approach nearer so to reinvest one with 
one's former apparently circumscribed knowledge of 
life, and so with an alien's claim of contested rights. 
So subtle is this claim of mentality that, unless one 



The Hidden Treasure 27 

trustfully keeps one's sight where the true Light is 
radiating, one will again feel the unholy flame there- 
from scorching one's vitals. This is so subtle an 
invasion that it may overwhelm one through the 
affection of a friend, or from the assault of some 
foe, or from a vain self-complacency arising from a 
belief that one has found the ease of life in some 
occult fashion, an ease which shall never be wrested 
from one again. But if one is sincere in one's un- 
dertaking, one will not be easily discouraged, and 
will not, therefore, wait an instant to rehabilitate 
his point of view with its native spiritual radiance. 

Perhaps the hardest experience is that which 
seems to place one at variance with one's friends. 
To many one has simply "gone daft" ; is being 
temporarily influenced by some doctrine which is 
holding him in its irrational toils. They prefer to 
discuss futilities with him than to hear of what to 
him is the Light leading him to a perfect self-knowl- 
edge. One has no fellowship with their views, and 
perhaps believes that it would be far easier to sub- 
mit to the ruling of the indolent human will than to 
give them the Absolute Word of God in return for 
their conventional phrases. One doubtless often 
bores them by his efforts in their behalf, and con- 
tinues to bore them until their hour of conversion 
comes ; a conversion due not so much to the form of 
presenting one's ideas, since one has felt his inability 
to express them properly, but due more to the ideas 
that one would so gladly have given them of Immu- 



28 The Hidden Treasure 

table Truth. The new convert invites the blessing 
of Heaven to himself. He fears no congestion from 
the Source of All-truth. And to this zealous one is 
given the Key of Heaven so that he shall find the 
hitherto seemingly closed doors of his thought 
springing open to Universal Nature, until he, too, 
shall be consciously overflowing with joy — even to 
the Scripture measure — filling the heavenly World 
with his delight. The new convert understands 
with ease. His receptiveness equals the angels' of 
Heaven, for it is of the same universality ; it is the 
spiritual infinity wherein is all delight, although it 
is always self-contained. See to it, friends, that 
you hold delightfully fast to the newness of your 
conversion. Never wax old, or rather stale, in 
your mentality so that you shall feel dependent on 
the staff of formulas ; so that you shall cast the 
pall of your ineffectiveness on the light of a newer 
convert. See to it that your soul enjoys its spiritual 
affluence, else while you are laboriously tithing 
mint, anise, and cummin, you shall see instead of 
your true mentality, with its joyous expression, 
only the shadow cast by the rags of an obvious 
spiritual poverty. 

IX 

A SUBJECT in which one has no interest bores 
one inexpressibly, and the friends who care only 
for the personal minutiae of daily events, whose 



The Hidden Treasure 29 

smiling outside perhaps covers only an unhealthy 
curiosity for the minutest diagnostics of hideous 
diseases, and of more hideous frailties, who spend 
the holy moment as votaries of Appearance, can 
only interest one, whose sense has wakened from a 
similar bondage to such enchantment, because of 
his desire to help them to their natural viewpoint 
from self-knowledge, whence they will desire to ex- 
press only the thought that shall know itself sound 
and undefiled ; that shall know for itself its source 
in Spirit — its Source the Infinite Field of Thought. 
It will doubtless be expected of one that he shall 
take an active interest in all the threshing and win- 
nowing processes of those for whom he is working, 
and that he shall critically enter into all their ethical 
and technical meandering. But into none of this can 
one enter if one would keep one's spiritual vision 
clear. Forthspringing will one's thought be if one 
keeps it constantly supplied from the Absolute 
Source by one's own happy consciousness of its 
abundance. But one should leave all others equally 
free to express themselves according to their will if 
one would keep his own consciousness of Truth in- 
tact. From the moment when man chose darkness, 
or partial light, rather than the full splendor of 
Spirit's eternal Light, has man assumed it to be his 
inalienable privilege to think always as he shall 
choose — to think or not to think, as he shall 
choose. 



jo The Hidden Treasure 

It is only whenever one is approached by another 
for the divine service, for which one's own soul 
should be spiritually baptized, that one has the 
right to say, "If you come to me to be helped 
through your mentality, then you must think with 
me." And whenever one has done all that another 
will permit him to do, if the latter shows a prefer- 
ence for some other way, one should leave him to 
his individual conception of spiritual guidance, and 
without questioning whither he is straying, and 
without taking his perhaps unsettling opinions in 
the least to heart. Moreover, this should all be 
done impersonally, so that no specific interest of 
one's own shall have a disturbing effect with one's 
friend, until this friend again appears, when there 
should be no remembrance of previous lesions to 
raise a single doubt concerning the stability of one's 
friend's spiritual purpose, whether it shall stay re- 
solved long enough to carry one's own spiritual work 
effectively in the other if one perseveres. While 
one is permitting himself to invade personally the 
thought of others with a disturbing interest, it helps 
to keep the ages-old problem anent the forgiveness 
of sin as an inner argument in one's life. And 
while one persists in so doing one is made sadly 
aware that his soul is eluding him rather than evad- 
ing its price for the Field of Treasure. For although 
one understands that the price of this Field is to be 
paid with one's selfhood, one also understands that 



The Hidden Treasure 31 

it can only be paid by one's consciousness of one's 
own absolutely poised unity with everything that 
hath been made. One, therefore, does one's work 
faithfully with others so that one's Treasure shall 
no longer appear buried from one's own sight or 
from the sight of others, but shall be the inner and 
outer revelation of man's real Being to one's self and 
so to all a revelation of Truth. 



THE INDWELLING REMINDER. 

I. 

IN one of TurgenefP s poems in prose, he used a 
figure by no means new, but used it with graphic 
power. I refer to the figure used to represent the 
invisible power of holiness symbolized by church 
and cross. This poem tells of one who remembers 
an early legend, the story of a Greek ship sailing 
the ^gean Sea in the first century after the birth 
of Jesus. A voice had said to the steersman, 
"When you pass by the island, call with a loud 
voice, * Great Pan is dead !' " This the astonished 
and frightened man did, when from this tenantless 
island arose sobbing and groaning, and moaning 
cries: " He is dead : great Pan is dead." The one 
who remembered this legend was standing at the 
foot of a beautifully wooded chain of mountains; 
the sunbeams were playing on their summits, and a 
lovely verdure concealed swift running brooks, but 
not their murmuring. He felt that he, too, must 
call out something, but could not think of death. 
"He has risen: great Pan has risen ! " was his 
cry. Then this marvellous thing happened : he 
heard a joyous prattling, and ringing laughter. 



The Indwelling Reminder 33 

There was the answering cry from youthful voices, 
"He has risen: Pan has risen!" The happi- 
ness that he had just felt in the world before him 
was emphasized until it became bacchanalian. And 
hastening down from the heights to the valleys 
were nymphs, dryads, and bacchantes, all led by 
the goddess Diana, the stateliest, most beautiful of 
all, with her bow and quiver, and the silver cres- 
cent moon on her curls, — so unlike Isis, with her 
feet on the crescent moon, and the very antithesis 
of Mary, the mother of Jesus, with her thought 
transfigured beyond the limitations of dreams. But 
the goddess stops suddenly ; the ringing Olympian 
laughter ceases. With terrified gaze these votaries 
of Pan view the sign of Christ reflected by a golden 
cross on a church steeple. There was a trembling 
sigh, and all had disappeared. There was only the 
forest-covered mountains through which shimmered 
a gleam of white. 

This inspiring motive may have served but tran- 
siently to nullify the apparent power of evil, so to 
brighten the theme whether of song or story, yet 
has it lingered in the thought long after the theme 
has been forgotten. Even the one who, in the hurry 
and bustle of what he calls his practical life, would 
deprive Jesus of his divinity, lets his thought occa- 
sionally linger enlivened by some inner reminder of 
what the power of holiness may be like. Men may 
scoff at their fellows who are paying the soul's 



34 The Hidden Treasure 

tribute to Christ. There may be charges of both 
hypocrisy and superstition included in the scoffing, 
while this scoffing may arise from a more or less 
sincere disbelief in the faithfulness of those whose 
heart's desire, however, is to be true worshippers. 
Unhappily, too frequently the charge is more or less 
deserved by the individual worshipper, but there is 
neither a scoffer nor a worshipper who does not 
have an occasional moment of honest turning to the 
In-visible which seems to hold the living Presence 
of the One whose love is unlike earthly love, whose 
power, moreover, is believed incontrovertible, what- 
ever the trend of man's selfish communion, although 
it is too often misapprehended by the one seeking 
its blessing. 

The One has been given many names, is diversely 
attributed by the different races of men, yet the 
Sign of the In-visible inspires every one with the 
same desire — although this desire appear but a 
fleeting hope — to enjoy its embracing care. Un- 
fortunately, the encircling love of this One is too 
often believed unable to reach far enough to cover 
adequately one's daily needs. Men claim to be in the 
world and necessarily of it. The example of Jesus' 
life is, therefore, set aside because of its present 
impracticability, even by those who profess his life 
to be to them the exclusive example to follow, while 
claiming that business interests, ill-health, and the 
minor phases of an evidently improvident destiny 



The Indwelling Reminder 55 

prevent their enshrining the Christ in their life as 
they would preferably do. It certainly must be 
admitted that a man cannot efface the world at his 
will, although it be no more to him than a reminder 
of Christian's burden. It, moreover, may appear to 
one as the too familiar semblance of a nature so irre- 
sponsive to his needs as to seem either oblivious of 
his interest or powerless to aid him, while the sigh- 
ing and moaning, the excitement and rigors, result- 
ing from the sapping of one's faith by fears, are 
only partially counteracted by the lukewarmness, 
and, therefore, the feebleness, of his own interest in 
real life. This interest thus fails to touch the vital 
point, while one substitutes instead an effort at 
struggling for endurance. The individual then prob- 
ably excuses himself for his mental apostasy by 
saying that the life of Jesus is impracticable here, 
to-day, and that it will be possible to live the Christ- 
life only in some heavenly land, where the cares of 
this life cannot tempt one to falter. Something like 
this form of reasoning one will probably offer himself 
to excuse his failure, while overlooking the important 
fact that Jesus came to teach man how to live the 
Christ-life here, now, and that he would not have 
found it necessary to come to teach man here how 
to live in a future condition of being when such 
teaching would be superfluous. 



36 The Hidden Treasure 

II 

PERHAPS one is tortured by remorse when retro- 
spectively viewing the mistakes irretrievably made, 
as he believes, mistakes which, when made, ap- 
peared uncontrollable by him, although later he 
charged them to his own heedlessness, impulsive- 
ness — selfishness. Yet these mistakes had seemed 
to influence all his later life, until finally he had 
allowed himself to become the partly-alive victim of 
a superstitious belief in a fateful form of govern- 
ment which ruled with a special personal antagonism 
against him. The forces which had then arrayed 
themselves against him had worked, or so he later 
believes, with such a concurrent effort, had so dove- 
tailed their material as to prove the superiority of 
some intellect promoting, engineering, the result 
which had destroyed the charm of life for him, — 
his trust in others, and his delight in himself. The 
indirection of his own earlier purpose, he sorrowfully 
admits. He had been personally self-seeking, but 
was not such a course justifiable? Should not every 
one look after that which is germane to his individ- 
ual interest since there is obviously no specific 
guardianship of gods? But since those days, for 
which his conscience, and very likely his self-re- 
spect also, has reproached him, he has endured from 
day to day the struggle for existence, yet is still de- 
sirous of continuing this existence, although aware 



The Indwelling Reminder 37 

within himself that sometime, somewhere, he has 
neglected an opportunity, has forged ahead of, or 
else dropped behind, the goal of Tightness. This 
sort of inner reasoning occupies the attention of 
even our young children, and maturity usually in- 
tensifies its morbidness. " I could have done better," 
an inner voice admonishes, while a depressingly in- 
trospective ego awaits the final decree of fate as the 
catastrophe of one's life. Yet nearly every one be- 
lieves in ;extenuating circumstances. And nearly 
every one is just enough to the life he bears — 
although he bears it as a reproachful judge — to know 
that he was subordinate to, rather than master of, 
the conditions he had encountered, doubtless believ- 
ing it might be honestly claimed that any other 
weakling would have fallen precisely as he fell. 

But there are other extenuating circumstances of 
which he in his mortal ignorance is probably un- 
aware, circumstances, however, that would never 
appear as such were it not for one's spiritual slug- 
gishness. The same ignorance that has made him 
unaware of his true environment, and also unaware 
of that which is taking place in himself, has, as it 
were, enveloped him in a mist which leaves him 
only a contracting boundary-line for his mental ho- 
rizon, this sense of limitation so obscuring his view 
as to prevent his seeing not only the real things of 
Life, but also to prevent his noting the processes 
by which his thought appears involved with the 



j8 The Hidden Treasure 

thought of others, who appear similarly enveloped 
in fancies, instead of being clothed with that radi- 
ance from the divine knowledge of life which the 
living Truth reveals as sufficient to light one's way 
joyously, and to supply adequately every need. 
Because of this ignorance, therefore, one does not 
know that those who are not self-forgiven in other 
worlds are not self-forgiven in the world to come 
until they shall have entered into the Christ-life ; 
and because of this one does not know that these 
many apparent worlds are as a unit with this world 
to every man, in what passes for a subliminal con- 
sciousness, and that there are groups of creatures 
ready to involve themselves further with him as 
their exponent in this world while he continues to 
permit a mental instability to be his misrule. And 
because of this ignorance, one believes that his in- 
most life is being lived as fully as it is possible to 
live this life here, and that no other phase of life has 
a single claim upon him while he is absorbed in 
this ; and so, apparently, one does not know that 
while he may, in his desire for the real, morally re- 
ject the present inherent selfish power of all that 
appears satanical from his life, or reject it at least 
so far as his implied limitations permit him to act, 
there will, nevertheless, be the weight of its obses- 
sion as qualities of what appears to him as an ad- 
verse mentality, to rule him inevitably through his 
channels of mechanical or intellectual effort. All 



The Indwelling Reminder 39 

the distorted fancies, for which a man's mentality 
so often seems capable of expression, will then ap- 
pear as so many forces of will-power, using his 
channels for manifesting their own will, solely be- 
cause he keeps himself open to the dominion of 
what would be to a worldly common-sense reason- 
ing some horrible phase of sorcery, of either a sus- 
pected or an unsuspected inner form of necromancy. 

Ill 

NOW it may be questioned whether the knowl- 
edge of such an apparent combination of forces is 
necessary for the safeguarding of one's mentality, 
necessary for the maintaining of one's integrity, and 
so for the promotion of one's well-being. Certainly 
the bare knowledge of such an enslavement by du- 
bious fancies would not relieve one very much, 
since one already knows that certain forms of fancy 
are always inimical to his interest if permitted ; that 
is, the bare knowledge of details, or such knowledge 
as a whole, would not be essential, as, even then, 
all that one would be able to offer against such coer- 
cion would be the resistance of the human will, 
which would prove no support as a defence since it 
is under orders to, subjugated by, what appears an 
enthralling power. Therefore a knowledge of this 
subjugation, without the true knowledge, would 
never prevent one's proving himself as ready a vie- 



40 The Hidden Treasure 

tim as an entire ignorance of it would leave him. 
For in what has been termed the subliminal con- 
sciousness of every one, this is already known in 
every detail of such knowledge. 

Now although such knowledge seems concealed 
in what also appears a field of thought, yet if one is 
regarding life from a human viewpoint, his draft 
upon life is being made, both subtly and obviously, 
upon just such a combination of forces as repels him 
when the confusing result becomes to him a sad 
blot upon his life, some shadow preventing happi- 
ness, a taint in his blood, a corroding canker in his 
fleshly soul, even while he feels his own moral rec- 
ord to be tolerably clear of intentional wrong-doing. 
These trooping fancies are what he seems unable to 
dispel, — the undesirable reminders of things which 
seem sorrowfully, fearfully, written in his flesh as 
penances, of which he believes that Death only can 
relieve him, although from some dread penance, he 
sometimes doubts Death's power to absolve him. 
But the pact of self, he reasons, has to be kept with 
self, and self is therefore the sacrifice demanded of 
him. 

It certainly is not important to know that every 
temptation appearing to one is personal in the same 
manner to many other creatures, both among the 
seen and the unseen. It is not positively essential 
to one's happiness to know that he establishes a 
conditional basis of life for himself by passively 



The Indwelling Reminder 41 

accepting a perverted form of communion with oth- 
ers, which is as false to their interest as to his own ; 
for the creatures which come looking for pleasure in 
the Valley of Desire, were he to know them self- 
analytically, could not help him in the least unless 
he were also to visualize the Sign of Spirit in every 
creature absolutely so as to visualize the form of 
presentation as the manifestation of Truth, the only 
manifestation instrumental for the good which is 
eternally embodied in all, thereby requiring the self- 
conscious response to Truth from every creature. 
When one does this, the mournful sighing, the fever 
and trembling, caused by burning, chilling, unde- 
sirable memories, will no longer be heard and felt. 
And then Mnemosyne shall have eternally vanished 
with the fancies she has brooded, and the whole 
Field of Thought shall be transfigured by the com- 
prehension of how the heavenly Soul fills the mo- 
ment within itself eternally as the divine Soul of 
All-being. 

One will accordingly understand that every 
thought expressed, even to the expressing of that 
which passes as thought but without the evidence of 
its divinity, has some form resembling it, and that 
one should therefore translate every sign of life into 
a correct reading. The cross that was to mark the 
crucifixion hour should become solely the reminder 
of the Resurrection, while the Resurrection thus 
becomes to one that which restores one's soul to its 



42 The Hidden Treasure 

pristine divinity, now animated as one's thought 
surely is by the Spirit of Christ — by Spirit itself. 
For with this perfect animation comes the perfect 
comprehension that all Thought is divine, that 
Thought is all there is — can possibly be — of Divin- 
ity, and that to think divinely should be the con- 
scious occupation of every one. 



IV 

STILL one is not to neglect his body, or to ignore 
utterly the story it tells of life. For no one is ever 
wholly dealing with mere appearances. One should 
know, however, that there is nothing so abstract as 
flesh, except an attempt at interpreting Spirit sep- 
arated from its embodiment. For both the angelic 
seen and unseen, the Spirit works a vital whole. 
With just a glimmering of the Light as it dawns 
upon one's consciousness, this fact is shown in 
whatever constructs, conserves, the good that one 
would gladly keep forever, and Spirit is further 
shown as the Unit throughout the whole whenever 
one gathers his own thought to its perfect rendering 
as the united intelligence of all. The air that one 
then breathes is surely filled with sentient life — 
with thought — although not with the poisons of a 
fancy dooming its body to either a slow or a rapid 
decay. Instead, one is consciously unified with the 
imperishable, invariable Power which establishes 



The Indwelling Reminder 43 

the Body of its creation eternally within itself, and 
therefore establishes that eternally within this con- 
ception which its creation is to manifest forever as 
the whole imagery of Spirit, increate. 

Whatever one conceives of perfection in another 
becomes to him an additional help towards sustain- 
ing his own manifestation of all that is spiritually 
desirable, although perhaps the other has not re- 
sponded favorably himself to the good so freely 
offered him. Now as no one has been sufficiently 
informed respecting the topography, geography, of 
the humanly mental realm to convince others that 
mere intellectuality is the whole of being, so no one 
has been able to assert positively enough to con- 
vince all that this world is not contiguous to, if not 
a unit with, other worlds within that realm which 
assumes mentality, and which therefore associates 
its creatures upon a basis founded by a sense of 
touch which results in a physical — forceful — 
rather than a spiritual — truly powerful — expression 
of being. 



Certainly a vast majority of the human race, led 
along the lines of such belief by the vaguest super- 
stition, or by the perhaps more creditably informed 
subliminal intellect, believe in forms of demoniac 
leading, believe in the attendance of creatures from 
some realm invisible to them, from whom they turn 



44 Th e Hidden Treasure 

afraid, or to whom they turn for help. In order, 
however, to make the power, if desirable, more 
real, they often invest some shape with the attri- 
butes of sentiency ascribed to the invisible guardian, 
to which prefigurement they idolatrously turn to 
remind themselves of its substantial presence and 
power. A like fancy obtains with many, openly or 
secretly, but obtaining in a more and more aesthetic 
form, corresponding to the refining processes thro gh 
which the personal human thought passes. Prob- 
ably to-day it cannot be truly said of any one — 
even of one who is convinced of the present absolute 
rule of Life — that he is not more or less subject to 
some sort of government, which fancifully differs in 
degree only from that accepted by others, a govern- 
ment either imposed by himself, or enforced by 
another will than his own, thus helping to give the 
variety to the personal measure of being. But 
should there be one without some intimation of a 
like supervision, to be accepted as a personal lead- 
ing, then this one will need to be unvaryingly 
watchful so that his sense of Truth shall not prove 
as abstract as are the abstractions of flesh, and 
therefore as little inspiring. 

But returning to the statement that some are led 
by superstition, while others are perhaps more cred- 
itably informed by the subliminal intellect, it should 
be said that the latter is the steaming centre of all 
superstition. Indeed, as regards its affairs with 



The Indwelling Reminder 45 

humanity, it should be spelled Monopoly, for this 
subliminal consciousness, as the soul and being of 
man, becomes to him a mentality quaking with fear ; 
a mentality superstitiously depending on admitted 
uncertainties for his better protection. This sub- 
liminal consciousness can, therefore, justly also be 
termed Superstition, and this form of address should 
reach the seat of war whence this claim of con- 
sciousness emerges with its troops arrayed against 
themselves as contrasting qualities, attitudinizing as 
thoughts, to wage their monstrous warfare within 
that appearance of a nature which man often prefer- 
ably calls his own personal nature. All the gran- 
deur, the majesty of the angePs strength, his sure 
possession from Heaven, seems, while one is appar- 
ently submitting to an unholy dispossession, only 
to be his to sustain him through the ages of suffer- 
ing which must then ensue. One may believe, 
while what he terms Destiny is shaping him for 
some present test, that he is going from the land of 
Shapes to the land of Shades, but somehow he feels 
that, whether shape or shade, that which has been, 
and now is, will always be vital — perhaps will 
always be subjected to suffering. 

VI 

SHADELESS and shapeless both, one cannot be- 
lieve himself doomed to be. Some inner admonition 
both warns and tenderly advises him that his sen- 



46 The Hidden Treasure 

tient being will never be lost through annihilation, 
but the human adaptability to suffering he greatly 
fears. Yet that it is the shade which casts the pres- 
ent shadow, he makes it labor to comprehend. Ap- 
parently, rather would he know who made the 
shade, how the darkness came with its attending 
shades, than to know that the Light is universal by 
keeping his own thought luminous ; than to know if 
he were to take his intelligence into his full keeping, 
take it whole, and keep it so by exercising it, that 
that which seems a shade, though not a transparency 
nor yet a vaccuum, is really the place where Spirit 
has its abiding-place, and that it, — his shadowy, 
hazy, dozy mentality, or rather that which seems to 
him a thinking power which is partially crippled or 
dwarfed in its expression, although really holding 
something valuable but elusive, — would be peopled 
for him with a creation like himself, a people inter- 
dependent one with another, a people glad with the 
same gladness, united on a plane of thought so 
inspiring that each would possess within himself 
that which is meat in Truth, that which is drink in 
Truth, all of that which is an unfailing source of 
delight — the true well-being. 

Do you think that with all this power fluent within 
one, — Power which does not seem even allied 
while the personal argument concerning life con- 
tinues, — one should not gladly be consciously alert 
enough to work towards his intelligent uniting with 



The Indwelling Reminder 47 

all on the true basis of Life? on that basis of agree- 
ment which results in the combined strength of the 
whole, for each to use in a rule for action that all 
would agree to be heavenly? Instead of which there 
has been permitted but a sort of unity based on 
argument, and on an argument culpably given .to 
every sort of disagreement, — to disagreements 
which appear to reach the remotest section of com- 
batants, and, alas, with their polarized centres in 
every heart. 

VII 

Nevertheless, years of as faithful devotion as 
one chooses to give seem required for the compre- 
hension that every shot fired at another, at others, 
is aimed from and at the heart of each individual ; 
that there is neither sorrow nor deprivation suffered 
by any one alone ; and that the demand for a 
peaceful laying down of arms throughout the earth's 
confines can result in nothing definite, even though 
the smoke of battle is withheld, until man, universal 
man, has more knowledge than he is at present obvi- 
ously willing to enjoy — by receiving it through a 
life that accords with heavenly Knowledge — of the 
fact that it is unity instead of relativity whereupon 
Life is based. 

The years which are so unprofitably spent in 
clamoring for such privileges as are classed among 



48 The Hidden Treasure 

the desirable but withheld, of which one believes 
one's self, perhaps, unrighteously dispossessed, had 
far better be abridged of that exercise, and the days 
spent actively in acquiring that understanding which 
will restore to one one's lost confidence in the Power 
within him which belongs in its entirety to all oth- 
ers as well as to one's self. It is by means of such 
devotion to the absolute intelligence of the Spirit 
within him that one learns precisely how asking and 
receiving are the same in effect; how one names 
one's blessings with a gratitude that had not been 
quickened into expression heretofore solely because 
of the sluggishness of one's spiritual desire, — a 
gratitude, a rejoicing, a thanksgiving, a gladness, 
which breathes its breath of Life through the Infinite 
Breath of Life spontaneously now, while unconscious 
that it is gratitude, but knowing itself as the Song 
of Life, as Spirit itself fully occupied with Prayer. 

Ostentatiously man asks for peace. He orders 
it ostensibly as a rule between nations, yet, evi- 
dently, as a rule to be observed only so far as mere 
externals go. He asks that muscles shall be re- 
strained from giving death-dealing effects, while he 
leaves the greatest muscle of all, the human heart, 
beating with antagonism against itself, against all 
whom it supplies with blood. And is there no 
power on earth or in Heaven to overrule this pul- 
sating antagonism which fills with its fiery flux the 
veins of men, yes, even more, which fills the 



The Indwelling Reminder 49 

heavens, the earth, the sea, with rancor from its 
service ? For it seems both servant and lord. 
Indeed there is. There is the Mind of the Universe 
— Universal Mind — infusing its blood, its heavenly 
vitality, through every soul, through everything 
that hath been made, with the Almightiness of true 
Self-love ; infusing its very Selfhood, the gracious 
blessing of every one when it is once comprehended. 
And whenever it is comprehended will cease for 
men those differential estimates of being, of power, 
of caste, of health, of wealth, of education, of refine- 
ment, of opportunism, that differential estimate 
which is always challenging the human soul to come 
out from its kind, and strut a little harder for the 
sake of obtaining some leadership in an already 
hard-pushed race. 

There are indeed shows of bravery to be seen. 
Unenlightened savagery has not given birth to the 
only stoics, some of whom seem unconsciously to 
have adopted the sentiment of these lines for their 
motto : — 

" And in what place soe'er 
Thrive under evil, and work ease out of pain 
Through labor and endurance." 

It is indeed a brave action for one to undertake a 
phase of life at all, handicapped as every infant 
appears from the start ; or at least it would be if 
one were not obliged to continue some form of being, 



50 The Hidden Treasure 

since Life itself is eternal in one. For those who 
believe that Life begins its office here in a little 
round of existence, there might certainly be felt 
qualms of conscience to alloy the pleasure of receiv- 
ing a little one, who will, according to their sincere 
belief, always be not only subjected to some of the 
failings of humanity, but also directly to the diseases 
and infirmities of its parents, while from atavism 
there will possibly be both mental and moral infirm- 
ities which the parents believe that they have for- 
tunately escaped. Non-essential queasiness, under 
such circumstances, might not appear the hardest 
thing to bear to those expectant mothers who are 
unaware that they should be occupied with hearing 
the salutations of the angelic hosts instead of with 
such qualms. For mothers whose knowledge is but 
slight, and who, therefore, fully believe that these 
representatives of the All-being are knocking for 
admittance to their love, but who do not understand 
fully all that pertains to this event, it is a portentous 
moment also, as it brings Life's legacy with it, and 
so a call for a faithful consideration of all that which 
is spiritually vital, and for an interest which is intel- 
ligent enough to meet the requirements of individual 
— universal — Life both for themselves and the hail- 
ing angels. 



The Indwelling Reminder 5/ 

VIII 

THERE are, nevertheless, the same requirements 
coming from every other child, and the sacred call 
of parentage, when rightly understood, will acquaint 
one with the fact that whatever is being given to 
other children — any of God's children — through a 
real service, is at once beneficently applied to one's 
own child also. An intelligent desire to serve faith- 
fully one's own child will acquaint any mother with 
the fact that she would be neglecting her dear one 
should she fail to be helpful to other children. 
Those who have worked their way intelligently by 
attempting to demonstrate what the Master taught 
them to do, and later by a knowledge gained from 
much experience of their own, will know that every 
demonstration for those of whom they were pre- 
viously ignorant, and to whom they were accordingly 
indifferent, or oblivious, until during some hour of 
faithful service, they had given the needy their Soul's 
own love, has increased their own poise, given to 
them the resolution so much needed, as also that 
confidence in their own retention of the Power that 
is — and is the only Power — all of which is essen- 
tial while human love continues to make itself 
unhappy and anxious because its apparent nature is 
fear — superstition. 

It is plainly obvious that the power ascribed to 
the god of human nature is a variable dependence. 



52 The Hidden Treasure 

There are occasional glimpses of beauty to be seen, 
but the hearing appears treacherous, heeding more 
the sobbing, the groaning, and the complaining, both 
the suppressed and the uttered, than it does that 
Song of Life which would delight one eternally, 
were this Song to be felt as the heart's true utter- 
ance. The ringing laughter too often suggests hys- 
teria instead of reminding one of heavenly gladness, 
while those who play upon humanity's stage, ap- 
pearing as gods, goddesses, nymphs, dryads, naiads, 
and bacchantes, each sustaining the various parts 
accepted by him, prove but sorry revelers in a dream 
always ready for dissolution — disenchantment, fortu- 
nately. But the nature ascribed to all this transi- 
tory pleasure, even if it seem for a time to rise to a 
fuller sense of Life, goes back to its dozing unsus- 
tained consciously by the eternal Strength. Milton's 
figure of Sin and Death and their incestuous chil- 
dren, by its very hideousness, impresses one with 
its characterization of the subtlety fruiting as hu- 
manity, a humanity, apparently, but temporarily 
resolved by vaguely involving and evolving ele- 
ments, having for their laboratory a partially sub- 
conscious mentality. 

Still within it all there is something which reminds 
one, and, paradoxical though it seem, not unhappily, 
of the cross. It is named sorrow, pain — suffering. 
The Master made no effort to bear the cross im- 
posed upon him, the cross which was transfigured 



The Indwelling Reminder 59 

for us by his Resurrection ; but unwise man exerts 
himself to bear as his cross this sense of suffering 
which crucifies him hourly, — so suffering for him- 
self, for another, and so for all others ; for how 
bitter is that intensified pang when it comes through 
one's beloved. How thoroughly then one realizes 
his unity of feeling with his own ; yet perhaps it 
will require many ages to come for the enlightening 
of all that the suffering of all others is, in one form 
or another, theirs also. But when this knowledge 
does come to one the true knowledge will also come 
that man should only know his blessed freedom — 
heavenly Peace. 

IX 

FOR notwithstanding this appearance of unity in 
suffering, Heaven is not the domain of suffering or 
sorrow. Heaven is surely the Soul's true occupa- 
tion of itself, even as it should be every one's 
conscious occupation of Thought. One can easily 
understand that a sympathetic Heaven could never 
be conscious of the depths of human anguish and 
continue Heaven-stayed. From some superstitious 
deep in the human soul, one may argue that suffer- 
ing was made necessary in his case for his further 
chastening, and quote the scriptural saying that the 
Lord chastens those whom He particularly loves ; 
but the better-informed, those who are constantly 



54 The Hidden Treasure 

reaching to the Divine for enlightenment, will know 
surely that there is neither a scriptural nor an inner 
authority which can enforce such a version of the 
Creator's love as true upon their own inner inter- 
pretation of Heaven's love, — as according with the 
love manifested by Spirit for its heavenly Child ; 
and surely Heaven made none else. 

Certainly Jesus held each one responsible for his 
mode of construing Life, — for what each received 
from Life as an individual. " Thy sins are for- 
given," he said, when healing the man sick with 
the palsy. This man was himself held responsible. 
But he was not to sin again ; otherwise, the quak- 
ing of fear would again sap his strength, which he 
would then forget was God-given, and so to use for 
his delight. Nevertheless, if one prefers to feel 
kindly toward suffering, to encourage what he then 
believes its helpful ministry, certainly the best word 
he can say for it is that it is a never forgetful school- 
master which has driven him often to desire that 
understanding which is the Conservator of Peace — 
of active, conscious Peace. In this way it becomes, 
like the cross on the church in Turgeneff's poem, a 
reminder of the Christ within one, which reminder 
dissipates the fearful effects of a dream by recalling 
into active life the realities of the In-visible. 

It may be truly said that if one will only let the 
inmost self behold the grace of Christ within him- 
self, he will then behold only this grace in all that 



The Indwelling Reminder 55 

hath the Sign of the In-visible Creator, because 
then everything manifesting Life, having the Cre- 
ator for its Life, degraded though the creature may- 
appear, comes to him as Heaven's spiritual child. 
For then will that disappear, powerless, uncreate, 
which has seemed to manifest itself as a power influ- 
ential in producing disturbing elements ; which has 
seemed capable of thwarting one whenever one felt 
some incentive towards a conviction that Absolute 
Truth is his souFs single aspiration ; and which has 
also seemed capable of making his days useless here 
because of his own suffering, or because of the 
suffering of others, when he would have preferably 
devoted himself solely to the recovery of his own 
sound sense, and to the selfsame recovery in others. 
Illusions are then dispelled. And then Delusion, 
the apparently intro-active god of a subliminal uni- 
verse, soulless, breathless, without being, has no 
longer even a shade. 

X 

AN earnest, well-tempered realization of the Power 
of true Thought is the necessary equipment of the 
genuine worker. Doubtless preceding this state of 
mind will have been periods of sentimental interest 
in human woe, when one, probably, sporadically 
tried to relieve it, as his own comfort and the re- 
quirements of his immediate family and friends 



56 The Hidden Treasure 

permitted him ; or else, probably, speculatively dis- 
coursed on the subject presented by a suffering 
world, and his own inability to offer any effective 
relief. But now one must come, divested of all 
shallow affectations, with the mind conscious of its 
strength, and with a heart that is like a burning 
flame, ready to burn the chaff away whenever and 
wherever it appears. One must be firm of purpose, 
and show, to himself at least, an unremitting, untir- 
ing devotion to the Self of the Universe. One 
should not, therefore, yield to the obsession of those 
who have opened the door to give him entrance to 
this school of existence — which is the sanest term I 
know to use for naming the demonstrations of Life 
which are called for, and imperatively called for, 
to-day. But one should accept his thought divinely 
clothed, and by doing this he will greatly advance 
his present interest in, and knowledge of, what is 
transpiring within his mentality. I refer to this 
obsession advisedly. That is to say, I am not 
blundering into some statement concerning that 
which is so markedly obvious to any mentalist with 
a genuine experience, without sufficient mental data 
to confirm my own experience. One cannot begin 
the work of a successful mentalist without first put- 
ting one's self in touch with that which presents 
itself as the mentality of others. We all start as 
novices, although we start consecrated for our work ; 
but at first — and occasionally later — there is much 



The Indwelling Reminder 57 

groping which calls for repeated turning to the Source 
for a replenishing of the Light ; the groping and the 
replenishing seeming to alternate continually, until 
one has loosed himself from all forms of ancestral 
obsession, so as to see clearly for himself that his 
Life begins directly in Spirit ; that there is no her- 
itage for him except that which the Host of Heaven 
bestows so plenteously. Then he understands pre- 
cisely how he reaches forth to touch his Selfhood in 
everything that hath been made. 

So I could not evade an allusion to this phase of 
obsession, and be as helpful to my readers as my 
heart would have me. I now refer particularly to 
that which is so evident to every mentalist with a 
long experience, the apparent obsession of an indi- 
vidual's mentality by others ; to what seems a palpa- 
ble fact — one permitting one's mentality to house 
tenants other than in the divine way. From the 
beginning of my work, I have realized that I must 
speak positively to those who would invade my 
province of thought with the desire of taking up 
their present abode in it. At first the manner of 
effecting one's freedom seems incomprehensible, 
but release comes with one's better knowledge, the 
knowledge which is oftener gained by assisting 
others, and never gained unless one does assist oth- 
ers. This form of obsession becomes psychically 
operative through a racial acceptance of life based 
on relativity. One of a former generation, in agree- 



5# The Hidden Treasure 

ment with an appointment made within the sub- 
liminal consciousness, assumed another phase of ex- 
istence for his expression of being. A descendant — 
by generation only — assumes the atmosphere that 
his forbear left here as personal, and offers his fancy 
to it, although he may know nothing of the personal 
traits of this forbear. How often one can note par- 
ents walking in the children whom they have left, 
and, probably, sometimes walking unconscious of 
doing so. But this is never good for one who bears 
such obsession as a burden laid upon his life. One 
should rouse his mentality from its obsessed condi- 
tion so as to dissipate this human resemblance, 
however worthy its original may have been. It 
certainly should not be perpetuated through coming 
generations, lest it shall become more enthralling as 
it continues. 

In his " History of the Conflict between Religion 
and Science," Dr. J. W. Draper says : " Is this the 
explanation of memory — the Mind contemplating 
such pictures of past things and events as have been 
committed to her custody? In her silent galleries 
are there hung micographs of the living and the 
dead, of scenes that we have visited, of incidents in 
which we have borne a part ? Are these abiding 
impressions mere signal marks, like the letters of a 
book, which impart ideas to the mind?" He also 
says, "A shadow never falls upon a wall without 
leaving thereupon a permanent trace, a trace which 



The Indwelling Reminder 59 

might be made visible by resorting to proper 
processes. " This is easy to understand, but it may 
not seem so easy to believe that every act registers 
itself upon what seems a vibrant world to impress 
everything with its touch. I am sure that no psy- 
chic impression can ever be effaced by human 
thought, by physical atmosphere, name it as you 
will. And this is the case solely because the Holy 
Spirit is tangible within its Nature, because it is 
construing itself permanently throughout its creation, 
however this construction may appear to the crea- 
tion. Man's misconception of life must therefore 
necessarily reflect that which continues a tentative 
existence, even after it has ceased to be tangible or 
visible to him. 

I should not be willing to submit that which I am 
pleased to call my mind to the invasion of the great- 
est philosopher or scientist that ever lived. I would 
not permit the greatest genius, or the greatest 
writer or thinker that ever lived, my thought for his 
parade-ground, but I would so gladly give it to the 
all-pervasiveness of the Holy Spirit, to the individ- 
uality of the Christ. Certainly every thought evok- 
ing a spiritual atmosphere is helpful. Many of the 
stories told of the infant Jesus may savor of the apoc- 
ryphal, but so also do the stories of his later work, 
called miraculous, by those who make no effort to 
prove his words as true by their own demonstra- 
tions ; yet every story told to portray his spiritual 
power helps me inwardly, and so enables me to 



60 The Hidden Treasure 

help others. Well might he have said to his 
mother, " Do not be afraid, and do not consider me 
as a little child; for I am and always have been 
perfect ; and all the beasts of the forest must needs 
be tame before me." One sympathizingly feels 
that the dragons, the lions, and the panthers should 
have comprehendingly adored this infant's Christ- 
consciousness, and then one's thought is ready to 
gather other babes into the likeness of this con- 
sciousness. One feels that the Soul of the Christ 
breathed through the soul of the palm-trees, while 
they, adoring, bent with their fruit to the feet of 
Mary at his will, and furnished from their roots the 
vein of living water to quench her thirst. When 
one has seen some demonstration of this Christ- 
power one's self, these acts of Jesus, or rather these 
acts attributed to Jesus, are natural instead of 
marvelous, while one all the more appreciates the 
atmosphere which makes the demonstration of this 
Power possible. For it is not then possible for the 
personal obsession of others to afflict one whether 
they are numbered with the dead or with the living, 
since one has safeguarded his happiness by accepting 
for his natural Thought that which is eternally sub- 
stanced without blemish, and which, therefore, 
never subjects itself to impressions. To behold the 
Christ in those who are sick because of, and thus 
imprisoned by, a false sense of Life, is to have that 
vision which holds within its flowing Light the 
beauty of the Incomparable. 



THE WILL 



I 



IN their souls men and women are children, even 
when they seem monstrous in their contentions ; 
decadents, perverts, in their habits. It may be 
observed of one, as the force one has perhaps 
unconsciously employed becomes a counter-blow, 
how the soul seems to shrivel and shrink, and plead 
for fathering, for mothering, for that loving, pro- 
tecting clasp of parentage which so graciously acts 
upon one to renew one's befriended sense of life, to 
restore the poise which seems to have been knocked 
askew by blows dealt by a culmination of adverse 
tactics, — apparently dealt by a concentration of 
inimical forces seeming to have had one in their 
cruel mind. The doughtiness of one's own courage, 
of which perhaps one has been exceedingly vain, 
has probably carried one through the first years of a 
contest waged between one's own wit and the wits 
of others. It was the same doughty sort of purpose 
as that which sustained one, however misdirected, 
for the contest when love, political preferment, 
social ambition, or commercial success was the 
stake. But the heavenly sight was not wholly 



62 The Hidden Treasure 

blinded, and so the Fount containing the real wine 
of Life was not entirely concealed, although the 
sense of a personal sufficiency, at first, supplied by 
a youth rebounding from the grave-clothes of an 
older experience, inclined one to a partial forgetful- 
ness of the infinite desirability of peace and trust, 
and thus of that tender Love which stays one in its 
Heart. And so one responded to the obvious call 
for an aggressive advance over all intervening obsta- 
cles, and responded valiantly because one had come 
to believe this the only way to a present worldly 
success. Yet withal, one felt one's isolation, al- 
though noting the personal subtlety extending from 
everything human, but without fully believing that 
it was with all others precisely as it was with one's 
self, except probably as to degree. Apparently 
there is the same necessity arising for a woman as 
for a man to scramble for place, for power. So 
whenever one mounts the watch-tower to overlook 
the movements of some declared foe, one believes 
that one has a good and sufficient reason for assum- 
ing a defensive position against the depredations of 
many foes, both the seen and the unseen for that 
matter ; believes one's self called upon to prepare 
for resistance at every point, — perhaps weakly 
believes that the contest will be finished only with 
his surrender of every interest vital to him. To 
such sad straits does the mere equipment of courage 
drive one ! 



The WW 63 

Were these sentences devoted chiefly to the 
classifying of human qualities, it might be urged 
that one who stands bravely before a foe, to meet 
his assaults without any apparent trepidation, will 
probably be longer able to endure the scourgings 
of time. Indeed, resistance has become a commend- 
able quality with many physicians, who give as the 
reason for any lack of favorable response from their 
patients that they had not the will to resist the 
inroads of disease, and so failed to be reached by 
medicine. Now such a statement appears plausible 
enough, and contains more truth for him who knows 
man psychologically than appears from a merely 
physical point of view. Still it might be questioned 
why medicines should be regarded as at all necessary 
if one has will enough to resist the inroads of dis- 
ease. If it is possible to have will enough to 
resist disease, why not have will enough not to 
admit disease as an antagonist at all? Why not, 
then, carry this resistance still further and not 
permit any sovereignty other than one's own will? 
And why, then, should one permit antagonism to 
rule him in any form? 



II 

BUT there are many whys and wherefores to con- 
sider if one elects to go by the way of the human 
will, for one will then be called upon to enact the 



64 The Hidden Treasure 

protagonist's lines through a continuous life-battle. 
Waking or sleeping, one will be the chief character 
in life's tragedy, to himself at least. There are but 
few, if any, who have reached the human life's 
halfway point in years without some inner rebellion 
against what appears the cruelty of such experi- 
ences. The disturbances come, in one form or 
another, either through one's self, or through one's 
dearest. To others one will appear merely an ordi- 
nary mortal, perhaps receiving the usual amount of 
idolatrous regard from a few intimate friends, while 
enduring the caustic opposition of others who dis- 
approve of his methods, whether worthy or unde- 
serving the support of their favor, by virtue of what 
they possibly construe as their undeviating prin- 
ciple. So within the place where the human mind 
prefigures the result of its calculations there is no 
friendly quiet, no moment when it is safe to pause 
for rest. The personal will must wear its armor 
day and night. Even when one would devoutly 
pray before he sleeps that sleep which should be 
invited as the blessed season of heavenly com- 
munion with the angelic hosts, one is conscious of 
the galling of his armor, and disturbed by the many 
trains of thought defences. Schemes for present 
relief, all of which suggesting the panoply of war, 
prevent one's realization of the Presence within 
one's soul with its Almightiness of Love ready to 
irradiate his heart with natural delight. 



The Will 65 

So whether the exercise of one's will relieves or 
enhances suffering may appear questionable ; none 
the less, this will's functional activity, when rightly 
disposed, can be safely regarded as the manifestation 
of an energy which is surely leading one to Pisgah 
Heights, whence the Promised Land may at least be 
viewed. And a glimpse of this land certainly proves 
its existence. But without making sturdy efforts in 
this direction, there are few who will not miss even 
that glimpse at present. Still one should not be 
disappointed should the efforts themselves have a 
way of demanding frequent attention; for later, 
one's intermittent efforts appear to one like an 
attempt at distributing melted ore along stretches of 
sand at irregular intervals. One, however, contin- 
ues these efforts, although with periods of inconstancy 
too frequent for an assured comfort, while perhaps 
believing that some true friend, trying to help him, 
is very patient in dealing with his needs ; yet more 
and more convincingly one turns to his own thought 
for its enlightening help, believing more and more 
in this thought's efficacy than in the efficacy of 
obvious things ; turns to his thought faithfully trust- 
ing that he may soon perceive the emanation of 
Heaven without helplessly depending upon any 
medium for its emanation other than his own glori- 
fied thought ; turns to the Holy Presence that he 
now can fully believe fills his whole soul with Light, 
and finally turns to it gladly for that absolute 



66 The Hidden Treasure 

Knowledge which will not leave him deprecating yet 
expectant, and so presuming only to say that he has 
a more intelligent knowledge of Life. For one now 
at least comprehends that the true armor of Life is 
the ever-shining heavenly Atmosphere, which makes 
his soul impenetrable to human darts even while 
one is completing his accepted term of human serv- 
ice by using his moment in earning the price of the 
Treasure hidden in the Field. 



Ill 

PROBABLY during all the ages of man has man 
been doctrinally demanding of himself the surrender 
of his own will to what he has construed as Heaven's 
Will, or rather as some form of deific will, the result 
of which, however, could bring his votive offering 
nothing possibly of greater value than his own sac- 
rifice to passivity. For such teaching can only in- 
struct one to be neutral before the Holy Presence, 
even so neutral as to efface the desire of possessing 
that heavenly Knowledge which is so necessary to 
the complete adoration of Wisdom. At least, this 
would appear as the condition imposed by such an 
argument upon the creature who must still be de- 
sirous of spiritual recognition else he would not thus 
undertake the expulsion of all that pertains to self, 
— to which ruling, it is obvious, no one has yet been 
able to subscribe entirely with his life. For, obvi- 



The Will 67 

ously, there are still the struggles of the rebellious 
soul to endure, a soul that braces itself by writing 
riot-acts with its heart's best blood. Yet one surely 
knows, even if one be regarding Life merely from a 
logical human point of view, that that which declares 
itself as will has some power within it which is 
ineffaceable. But this is a frequent question : If 
the will of man is not given him for the purpose of 
enforcing his taking up or laying down of arms, 
figuratively speaking, why is it then that such a 
will so often proves to one merely a means for self- 
persecution? Every believer in the Christian doc- 
trine accepts as true the statement that Christ is not, 
or rather was not, born of the will of flesh, but was 
conceived and born of the Will of God alone. Here 
is a characteristically human discrimination, a dis- 
tinction, surely separating the average Christian 
from Christ, although this statement provokes — as 
it should not — no challenging doubt in the heart of 
any sincere believer. That the one who came to 
be the perfect example of all others, should have 
been thus conceived, and thus embodied, among 
men, many believe not only to have been possible, 
but to have been effected also, even though this 
conception and birth occurred in the remote ages of 
the past, among an alien people. It is only the 
effectiveness of such a life as an example which is 
denied — by man's inactivity — this example being 
therefore nearly void of result even in the best of 



68 The Hidden Treasure 

the race. So the memory of this example amounts 
to very little more than an unanswered heart-cry, 
as men reflect upon that Christly Son, who, with- 
out so much as resisting the call to human nature's 
combats, came here to live without any human 
self-assertiveness respecting his earthly privileges ; 
came simply for the sake of quickening us to the 
absolute knowledge that the divine in us is all there 
is ; that the All-power of Divinity is wholly ours to 
use ; and, furthermore, that it is the sole Power of 
any one's equipment. 



IV 

ALTHOUGH to some it may seem an irreverent, 
if not a sacrilegious, assertion, yet I must state 
my own conviction that it is only in their con- 
ception, their interpretation, of what will is, and 
what its exercise should be, men differ from the 
Christ. Certainly Jesus taught plainly enough that 
one could easily possess himself of the true letter 
concerning Life, for he said : " If any man willeth 
to do his will, he shall know of the teaching, 
whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself." 
Yet, with such definite instruction, some say that 
they should know the whole letter before attempting 
to practice the Will of Heaven intelligently. Cer- 
tainly the knowledge of no human art, or science, is 
attainable in this way, yet many appear to believe 



The Will 69 

that, somehow, the good of Heaven will take posses- 
sion of them to bless them without any active prac- 
tice of their own, although a moment's earnest 
converse with their intelligence should convince 
them that Heaven is not thrusting its blessings 
through or upon any one in such an equivocal 
manner. Moreover, if one's outlook be from a spir- 
itual viewpoint, he will soon be able, if only logi- 
cally, to say that Heaven always has been really 
expressing itself in man throughout the ages of 
man's waiting. For myself, let me say, I ask for 
an intelligence hard enough to be intelligent ; some- 
thing with a diamond's clearness, and as impersonal, 
yet forever consciously blessed with the Almighti- 
ness of Love. I have known long enough the utter 
inefficiency of a vaporing, maudlin sentimentality, 
which is too soft and weak to be useful, while often 
troublesome from a liability to an evaporization from 
its own excessive fermentativeness. 

One certainly should not preferably account an 
ignorance of Heaven's Will as his chief spiritual 
blessing, because then, as probably most know from 
their inner experiences, one is attitudinizing the 
God of Heaven into an accusing conscience. Ac- 
cording to the prevailing religious beliefs, the 
Unknown God of ancient Greece was travestied as 
reigning with heavenly power in sundry idolatrous 
forms, but it certainly required the active imagina- 
tion of men to keep such images sentient to their 



jo The Hidden Treasure 

fancy. Still, those old Pagans had a far sounder 
estimate of things human than have some modern 
religionists, since they never expected any single 
god to express every human quality. If they were 
anthropomorphic in their religious belief, they 
showed a more logical mode of reasoning than is 
being shown in much of the present-day belief in 
anthropomorphism. For they did not expect the 
same deity to pity and to heal, to punish and re- 
ward, to show mercy and to decide the penalty, 
in the same instant, and for every man. Nor did 
they put themselves to the inconvenience of having 
a deity within themselves who would leave them no 
moment of grace, but would continue a warning 
voice in their ears, a pulsating, terrorizing engine in 
their hearts, instead. Not that their idea of love 
was absolutely fixed ; instead, their love god ruled 
capriciously, often making his sign with wings ex- 
tended for further flight, but not infrequently stop- 
ping seriously and sedately to preside over some 
fervid interest of the greatest passion of human life ; 
that passion which, after all, seems, for a season at 
least, to be the chief interest to men and women 
both in this existence — the love of mortal, or of 
mortals. Not that any one would so declare it 
probably, nor that one should so declare it. Rather 
ought one to have this love appear as the Soul's cry 
within one for its complement — for its completion. 



The Will 71 



V 



YET how does one regulate his devotions to that 
God Whom he names the Love of his life to-day ? 
Does one always remember Love's true Name when 
he is bestowing his affection upon his friends, or 
receiving theirs in return ? Is the love he gives his 
friends a spontaneous joy, or is there something 
voluntary in his remembrance of them ? Does he 
spare himself a day of sorrowful reckoning by seek- 
ing that realization of Heaven's perfectly spontaneous 
love which always helps one to feel that Love is 
immortal in his beloved, and that what conserves it 
so is its unity with the Will of Heaven which is 
Love Immortal, that Will which is the spontaneous 
expression of glad, Immortal Life ? For to feel this 
Love as the Power of Life is to know the Will of the 
Kingdom within one. 

It is easy to see that this heavenly Will is not 
declarative of a power that exacts fealty by a mer- 
ciless dominion which suppresses will in its object. 
This heavenly Will is not virtually saying, "I am 
He before Whom you are to bow a victim without 
mind or power. " Nevertheless, the Mosaic state- 
ment that the Deity of Heaven is a jealous God 
seems to accord with man's beliefs concerning Life, 
as upon things spiritual he sets only an inconstant, 
and so a fluctuating, value. But one joyously ap- 
preciates the spiritual Will when he realizes its 



J2 The Hidden Treasure 

value as an entirely spiritual factor, operating 
through his life to-day as an intelligent Guide, an 
unfailing Strength, a Soul all-loving. The race has, 
however, evidently viewed the sad results of what 
it has termed the inflexible, and often cruel, will of 
men, thus to predicate the Divine Will in its human 
likeness. But this human will obviously has ears 
for a human communion only ; has, too frequently, 
selfish leadings of its own, from the sin of which no 
human love can possibly absolve it. One appre- 
ciatively proclaims an inheritance of some specific 
human virtue from worthy forbears, or else per- 
sistently strives to keep in some dark background the 
shame of unworthy ones, while trying to subdue the 
inclinations in himself of a human heritage from a 
generation whose taint he fears ; but there are few, 
if any, who look entirely to their direct inheritance 
of Will for a reinstatement of their true conception 
of Life. Yet many believe that all their prayers to 
Heaven should be answered because of a few having, 
as they believe, brought the heavenly response. 
Because of some favorable results, they sincerely 
believe that they have reached the hearing of the 
Divine Will, and that these prayers really moved 
this Will to some partial abrogation of its laws in 
their favor. But whenever they have not believed 
that their prayers were answered favorably to their 
personal interest, they have accordingly believed 
that Heaven was disinclined to attend to them, or 



The Will 73 

else, in some manner, jealous of a different principle 
of government. 



VI 

ONLY those who have felt the blessedness coming 
from such knowledge can be aware of the peace 
which springs in the heart of one who knows abso- 
lutely that the hearing of the heavenly Will is 
attuned only to its Own Voice, so that it can hear 
no complaining tone in the only Voice that it has 
given its creation to use. This knowledge proves a 
quick summons to order whenever one fully realizes 
that Heaven's ear is not deaf to any one's despair- 
ing cry, since this cry is not heard throughout the 
length and breadth, the height and depth, of Uni- 
versal Love simply because this love as Divine WiH, 
as All-divine, has conceived nothing for its Own 
that can possibly obstruct the way, or occasion any 
suffering or sorrow. So this knowledge lights the 
moment when the transfiguring of one's heart takes 
place. And so one allows no ugly, selfish view of 
his own personality, or of the personality of others, 
to distort his vision ; for it is the moment during 
which one reconstructs his conflicting views of Life 
into the single viewpoint by resolutely accepting 
this Will, with the divine hearing only, for his very 
own. One is now wiser than to blame one's self, 
because of being thoroughly aroused to the fact that, 



74 The Hidden Treasure 

even to blame one's self, will continue some form of 
reasoning which will again prove a pitfall for feet 
that are perhaps only feebly turned to Truth, de- 
spite one's resolution to go forth faithfully with the 
Divine leading. 

How immeasurably glad one is to know that if 
Heaven appears devoid of pity, this is solely because 
it knows of nothing to pity, — because it knows 
itself as the All-in-all ; so glad to hear surely that 
the Almightiness of Life is for glorification instead of 
for commiseration. Yet it may be noted how much 
greater appears the Power coming from man to man, 
and how much greater appears man's trust in it, 
than in the directness of Heaven's Power, when so 
many, who are ready to proclaim their understand- 
ing of the Power of Heaven within them, still trust 
more to this same Power in man, and in his offering 
of it to their thought, than they do to the whole 
Might of Heaven in Heaven itself. Happily this is 
a perfectly true view to take of the heavenly Power, 
since it is whole in every man, in every creature, 
in all that hath been made, and so is certainly as 
whole within the individual seeing its helpfulness in 
another. How faithful, then, this individual should 
be in whom another trusts sufficiently thus to leave 
open the gates of his thought as to his God, both 
day and night ! It is indeed a solemn though joy- 
ous occasion — for the gates of Heaven are wide 
open, too, within this helper's heart ! One has only 



The Will j 5 

to think with an unswerving directness that this 
Will, to which he announces himself the heir, is ab- 
solutely founded, and all that is true of that Power 
in man which is known as mental stamina. Never- 
theless, this mental stamina seems to need a spiritual 
baptism in every one, in order to present itself as a 
likely Christ-child with the heavenly head and feet, 
and all that which glorifies itself as the spiritual 
embodiment of Being. Still, this baptism will not 
clarify one's sight and feeling unless one seek it 
gladly. For what we regard as our mental stamina 
has doubtless had ages of baptismal events in sor- 
row, and innumerable times, doubtless, appeared to 
stand waiting for conversion, although ignorant of 
the cause of its delay. But with the new baptism 
comes the new interpretation of Will. It is no 
longer demonstrated merely by a patient exercise of 
faith shown by waiting for the Lord's Own hour 
for recognition of the individual's need. And it is 
no longer that semblance of Power which enables 
one to endure stoically the winnowing processes 
whereby the Good in him is to be freed through the 
meshes of some spiritual sieve, while the evil of man 
is being burned by' a liquid fire without consuming 
it. For the burning which has made a lurelight 
will die because of flames unfed so soon as man's 
will has baptized itself in the splendor of the Eternal 
Light — God's Will. The Principle of Heaven 
dwells the same enduring Power in every one. No 



j6 The Hidden Treasure 

Paphlagonian oracle betrays that secret which, if 
revealed, would show the manner by which Heavens 
favor could be lost to one through another's will. 
Such a possibility should not prove convincing to 
the common sense of man. The oracular device by 
which Aristophanes unmade the tanner Cleon to 
make the sausage maker Agoracritus a power is as 
plausible. One may show no evidence of natural 
Power in his life because he fails to use that which 
is his spiritually, but whoever accepts the responsi- 
bility of Life intelligently will find the heavenly 
Power fluent in him, and will understand that, 
despite the human propensities which would some- 
times thwart him if permitted, and despite the 
machinations of a subliminal will, Spirit is shaping 
his way always divinely. There are then no vaguely 
terrifying premonitions to trouble his heart — to 
paralyze his activities. 

VII 

WHENEVER one understands the Power within 
him well enough to use it faithfully, the apparent 
brutality of evil loses its rule in him. He no longer 
suffers from the chastising fires of evil. The serpent 
never had a malicious fang. Death never had any 
poison in its sting, for it never had a sting. It never 
had a stalking ghost : it never knew of any creation, 
good or bad. All this one knows with a knowledge 



The Will JJ 

transcending the reach of challenging doubts, so 
soon as his will becomes an active willingness to 
enter into the heavenly agreement with the Spirit 
of the living Way. For now it is understood that to 
be born of the Will of God means that one is con- 
sciously thus born ; is also conscious of being rest- 
fully borne by this Will through the daily occurrences 
of his life, which occurrences he has ceased to regard 
as happenings, or accidents, but knows to be the 
direct result of what he is receiving into his own 
thought ; or perhaps knows to be the indirect result 
of what he has received thoughtlessly starting its 
operations through him. But he has learned his 
full responsibility : He is responsible for the good in 
his life, and for seeing the good in every one ; re- 
sponsible for the knowledge that all good is going 
his way, since his way is the way of divine agree- 
ment — for him the way of heavenly willingness; 
a willingness which he now knows should image 
only the Might of the heavenly Willingness within 
the Divine Self. 

One has also learned that the penalties one pays 
for the sin of ignorance are of small account com- 
pared with the magnitude of those attached to dis- 
regarded knowledge ; but it is well with one when 
he understands that each one affixes the penalty for 
himself. Perhaps, however, one has complained of 
his own irresponsiveness to Truth. So he goes to 
another for a solution of his problem. " Why, oh 



j8 The Hidden Treasure 

why, am I thus afflicted ? Should not Truth prove 
sufficient for the hour?" From this friend's own 
experience comes the solemn answer : " All truth 
voices itself through you, bidding you come with it. 
Go you with it ; stay with it ; be only its expres- 
sion consciously to yourself. " But this will often 
be the answer : " I know all this ; can you tell me 
nothing more ? Can you not give me some clue to 
the way I should go ?" Yes, truly, all this one 
knows ; but the trouble is that one does not always 
call — constantly call — upon the upright activity of 
this knowledge, upon its individual strength and 
power. For were he to do so, it would then become 
to him the Tree of Life with its leaves of healing for 
all the nations of the earth, for the world ; the heal- 
ing which would then come from the World-invisible 
to man, whose own phase of existence is to him 
otherwise nothing more definite than a wheel within 
wheels. But the Tree of Knowledge of Good and 
Evil, of the fruit of which one seems sometimes 
preferably to partake, is responsible for this whirl- 
igig of time. When it blossomed and fruited there 
appeared for its protecting might the flaming sword, 
which turns every way while encasing itself in the 
human life of man. As pain it appears a wincing 
reminder to man of his servitude to everything 
which never appears consciously to extend beyond 
the knowledge of an elementary nature ; and also 
as a reminder that its blow shall finally end his 



The Will 79 

indefinite pursuit of life here under adverse circum- 
stances. It certainly suggests to one his obviously 
native ignorance. The Tree of Shades, it might be 
called, upon the respective leaves of which seem 
written some doleful tale for every one who is greedy 
for its fruit. 



VIII 

YET each one already has given to him that 
knowledge which, if put into practice, becomes the 
heavenly quickener of life for him, the understand- 
ing of Self, of Will, of Soul. In some fortunate hour, 
although adversity seem to abraise him without and 
within, he seeks to give himself wholly to this 
Knowledge ; aims to give himself to its acquisition, 
and so to its expression, completely, and the result 
is that the barren spot he has hitherto believed his 
thought to be, springs into beauteous life, and he 
believes that he shall always prove faithful to its 
Source of nourishment. For him then there is no 
world other than Heaven. But the acuteness of the 
situation becomes less intense, fades into forgetful- 
ness, or else is remembered merely as some physi- 
cal defect which vanished as one devoted himself 
wholly to what he would now theoretically term 
Truth's absolute way of viewing Life. He avers 
that we cannot all be priests and oracles ; there 
should necessarily be a preponderance of laymen at 



80 The Hidden Treasure 

present to look after the work neglected by those 
who are wholly absorbed in the spiritual field of 
usefulness, or by a devotion to incubating ideals. 
This, at least, might be the inference drawn from 
the reasons sometimes offered for giving the world 
the place belonging to Knowledge ; and certainly 
the versatility of Reason needs no inspired tongue 
to magnify its cause. In its subtle fluency, it would 
claim the sceptre of sovereignty over man ; it im- 
plies its divinity ; it would even spell itself as cause 
with a capital C. 

But the world and its occupation can never really 
displace one's interest in Knowledge, that Knowl- 
edge which one interprets as omniscient ; that 
Knowledge which knows only what the Soul of All 
knows of itself. It is perhaps for this reason that 
the pale goddess Intellect keeps her fires flaming 
near the border-line of safety — perhaps unconscious 
that a longer leaping flame would redeem her as 
Intelligence. Nevertheless, this Knowledge, which 
is divinely intelligent, one should faithfully try to 
carry with him into the world ; this Knowledge 
which transcends the things humanly imperceived 
to give even to such things their true sensibilities — 
their spiritual sensitiveness and alertness — so that 
they may consciously respond to their contact with 
the divine ; and so that they shall behold only the 
heavenly Sign in everything, in every one. And 
as one spiritualizes his will thus faithfully with a 



The Will 81 

desire which comprises every desire other than those 
desires for purposes which ring untrue, because this 
desire is based on an absolute trust in fundamental 
Being, this will bring forth results which increase 
one's confidence in Spirit until one understands the 
method by which the appearance of a world and of 
worlds shall be transformed, transfigured, into the 
divine image and likeness, for which most declare 
that they are waiting, although without any very 
inspiriting belief in its coming to pass. Yet how 
can any one be well and happy with only a return, 
void of spiritual result, from misspent energies? 
Would one, advisedly, be willing to play a mum- 
mer's part through the coming ages, particularly 
when one knows that time can have only a relative 
measurement, written as it must ever be for every 
one on the decimal side of a fancy stretching vaguely 
through infinity ? 



IX 

THE Will of Spirit enables one to speak with the 
authoritative Voice of this Will to himself, and, 
through his true grasp of Self, to the whole world. 
So one becomes absolutely conscious of his spiritual 
Self-reliability. This Will teaches one that, when- 
ever one is speaking to himself truly, he is at once 
in communion with the whole spiritual World ; and 
that he is united with the heavenly Nature filling 



82 The Hidden Treasure 

every child of Spirit, filling everything that hath 
been made. So, as one thus speaks to the world, 
he feels that the heavenly Power is adding Heaven's 
Unit to his expression, even adding the blessedness 
of the true World unto him. One then knows, even 
if the need appear great, that this need is a cause 
for rejoicing, rather than for grieving, since the 
supply is sufficient to fill every need with happiness. 
For what appears as an infinite need is, when simply 
known, the place of welling Light ; the abode of the 
Holy Spirit. One can ask for nothing more, desire 
nothing more. What, therefore, is returned to one 
from the Universe is surely returned from one's 
conception of the Universe ; so, for one's happiness, 
one should know that one cannot regard the creation 
as something left helpless by the Creative Will, 
leaning or prostrate from weakness, without being 
prostrated one's self by the same weakness, which 
then becomes to one a manifold force multiplying 
itself by the number of the countless hosts, who 
seem to lie a cumulative weight from day to day, 
from year to year, an unendurable burden upon one; 
this burden being chiefly due to one's own increas- 
ing resistance as one struggles with others in the 
argument of materialism, which argument eventu- 
ally brings one with all his compromises to the dust, 
but, happily, not to end in dust. Most, fortunately, 
know better than to prefigure such a finish for 
Heaven's child. 



The Witt 83 

But he who goes back to the world — for it seems 
like going backward whenever one ceases to gather 
one's self into one's true mental place, after having 
viewed Life from true Mind with a brief delight — 
will never be able to add enough of the leaven of 
Knowledge from his own knowledge of what Truth 
has done for the individualism of the race to impreg- 
nate the race with spiritual desire while he is 
making daily, perhaps hourly, or even momently, 
concessions to the mutable characteristics — the 
vicissitudes — of the human will. One might then 
say with Dante's pilgrim, making his horrible dis- 
coveries in the region of hellish results from hellish 
intents, 

"At war 'twixt will and will not in my thoughts," 

as he pursues the way of Appearances, occupied 
as he necessarily is with the closest calculation con- 
cerning how he can maintain his footing safely in 
the midst of a way seemingly ever exuding corrupt- 
ing poisons, even from one's dearest. For the way 
of a germinating world is full of difficulties from the 
outset. Indeed, the microbe's task is a hard one. 

Yet one can gratefully know that his true Self is 
not now, has never been, and shall never be con- 
cealed from him because of its being ensnared within 
the temporary limitations of a human will. So one 
can easily have the relief which the true Knowledge 
offers him that this presumptuous quality, masquer- 



84 The Hidden Treasure 

ading as a will, never had, nor has, any power to 
issue its compromising mandates to him through 
himself, or through another. Yet often the human 
will is to a man as abstract a consideration as his 
view regarding the Divine Will ; for it may have 
been as consciously able to take a stand for itself as 
the proverbial wet string, and so irresolute that 
others have passed him by, regarding any attempt 
to help him to uprightness as a waste of their own 
energy. It may have been said of him by others, 
with obvious justice, that he was too weak of will 
to suffer much ; yet he has probably known that 
phase of anguish, which comes to all who are not 
mentally-poised, arising from a belief of being 
pushed by untoward circumstances tb some prodig- 
ious effort, for the making of which his strength 
seemed totally inadequate. But when the moment 
of real enlightenment comes with its blessed clear- 
ness, one perceives that this will, whose absence he 
had so sadly deplored, was not the desirable Will, 
since one could not trust to its working power for 
intelligent results. He has happily come to know 
that here, within himself, is that Will which carries 
one without one's needing courage to fortify one, 
and that all one has to do is to give one's self will- 
ingly to its carrying Power in order to have its com- 
pleteness in one's self, when one gladly admits that 
this Presence makes the moment one of rest, of 
peace, of plenty. 



The Will 85 

X 

Still, there is the forlorn cry of the masses in 
one's ear, the masses unconscious, because of dozing, 
that they are numbered among the angelic hosts. 
There is this cry in one's ear, if one choose to hear 
it, and there will surely be this cry in one's ears, 
even if one do not choose to hear it, unless one 
choose to put into that cry the Spirit with the Song 
of Eternal Thanksgiving as faithfully as he should. 
If one does this he learns to give to the upright Will 
a new meaning. He is no longer daunted by his 
former fears. So, from one's inmost thought, 
wherein the Spirit of Heaven is forever abiding, 
forever animating, one gathers his life impersonally, 
firmly, willingly, until he is fully conscious that 
there is nothing relative pertaining to mine and 
thine having existence. Between the moment when 
he offered himself as a neophyte before Truth's 
altar and this impersonal moment, there has proba- 
bly been an interval during which he believed him- 
self drawn before the tribune of human judgment ; 
for if the Voice of the heavenly Will is not the only 
Voice one hears, then will one observe that those 
whom he would so gladly help have become his 
accusers. It will then seem to some that he stands 
a very monster of cruelty, who would ruthlessly 
destroy them by his insistence that they shall use 
the Power with which they are naturally endowed ; 



86 The Hidden Treasure 

by his persistence in calling upon them to see the 
face of the angel before they shall have died in 
order to enter Heaven ; by his obvious sternness 
and severity towards their thousand and one weak- 
nesses which they seem determined to accept as 
inborn, — although of which they would deem it 
perfectly right for another to relieve them, — all of 
which they seem to see rather than to see the 
evangel of Truth he carries for them. 

Undoubtedly, any one who has reached that 
knowledge of himself, whereby he has been enabled 
to stand unquestioning as to what he himself shall 
do with the strength that he knows to be Heaven- 
given, has reached that knowledge by being far 
more merciless to himself than he is as yet willing to 
be to others. The way that men preferably cling 
to weakness would make such a course seem sav- 
agely cruel. Nevertheless, would they not consider 
such treatment as they are, in their ignorance, 
imposing upon him cruel rather than merciless, 
if they only understood that the individual worker 
pays his fee for working with himself as the price ? 
with what they would regard as necessary to their 
comfort while they are engaged in converting their 
earthy vessels into heavenly Treasure ? There, 
however, seems to be a different quality biting its 
way as mercilessness from that which is biting as 
deliberate cruelty. For wilful cruelty seems at 
least a step nearer the monstrously depraved, al- 



The Will 87 

though those who are sentimentally considerate of 
their temperaments will take a different view con- 
cerning this subjective condition. The savage de- 
sire to cause suffering does not confine itself to 
any particular human class ; none the less, it should 
be regarded as nothing more than another phase of 
madness by those who are working for the good 
of all. 



XI 

HOW morbid is that view of life which claims the 
Christian religion as its starting-point, yet expects 
men and women to sacrifice themselves to the 
weaknesses of brother-men and sister-women with- 
out any recompense other than that suffering which 
would necessarily be entailed by such a mistaken 
course. The meaning of a vicarious office has been 
so misconstrued as nearly to have lost its efficacy. 
Jesus surely did not offer himself as a sacrificial 
example for the race to follow ; for if he did his was 
not the vicarious service that the Christian world pro- 
claims it to have been. The human Jesus died on 
the cross, but the living Christ is eternally mani- 
fested in the present life of every one, and if each 
one will only receive the benefit of this divine Pres- 
ence by consciously dwelling in it, then will Jesus 
the Christ have effaced all sorrow and suffering for 
those who have come into their heritage of Love by 



88 The Hidden Treasure 

a self-application of his teaching. The Jesus, more- 
over, who demonstrated by the way, and so in the 
life of those who accepted his ministrations of the 
heavenly Will, gave himself to the work of the hour, 
fearless of any, of every cross. His work, how- 
ever, was done for all, and the few instances of his 
work given us show the individuals responding from 
the selfsame Source of Power, precisely as he ex- 
pected them to do. He taught plainly enough that 
the forgiveness of sin resulted only from a man's 
consciousness — knowledge — of Spirit's work within 
him. He himself was neither resistent nor passive. 
His thought was wholly active. Although he did 
not show sufficient physical strength to bear the 
cross, yet did he manifest sufficient spiritual strength 
to embody his life afterward to his desolated disci- 
ples ; a spiritual strength sufficient to gather them 
to their work as scribes, as teachers, as demonstra- 
tors of the living Faith, — so to do the work where- 
unto he had appointed them from the beginning. 
More than this, after having left the sight of men, 
he manifested the Power of the heavenly will suffi- 
ciently to transform the zealous Saul into the spir- 
itually illumined Paul, who was to carry the work 
by means of his own enlightenment to a plane of 
thought which would interpret the Truth of Christ 
to many. 



The Will 89 



XII 



IT would do one no practical good to regard occa- 
sionally the life of some beautiful, god, although this 
god were, so far as one could then be capable of 
knowing, possessed of all the graces of earth and 
heaven combined. For one could then have only 
such knowledge of this beautiful being as could be 
derived from an occasional emotional, hysterical in- 
ference. Only from true Knowledge comes spiritual 
perception, or feeling, — although to call it atmos- 
phere best states it, — with its broadening, deepen- 
ing, heightening reach, as one is more and more 
willing to absorb it into his life by desiring that this 
shall be his only emanation to others ; so does it 
become to him the real Nature of Spirit, of all Self- 
hood, and so the Truth of all things. Thus, from 
this habit of thought, it becomes the natural mode 
of operation to treat all others precisely as one 
treats one's self, although one probably does not at 
present expect as much of another as of himself. 

Yet looking through the deepening reaches of 
memory, whose remoteness would not altogether 
account for *the partial obscurity wherein events 
seem veiled, one can note, probably, without enter- 
ing into the details of a past, how then his moods 
governed him with their emotional tendencies. Out- 
side he may not have shown exactly how his emo- 
tions were seething within. There may not have 



go The Hidden Treasure 

been the momentary effervescence for his friends to 
discuss, but he had felt a separation like a sediment 
hardening, to drop with a dull thud, or a fierce pang. 
The spiritual atmosphere which radiates the joy of 
living springs from the Source which sustains itself 
by the spontaneity of its circulation. One turns to 
Spirit at first aware of its being a voluntary effort, 
but his knowledge inspires him to perceive that his 
thoughts should be as spontaneous as Spirit itself. 
There has been an aversion shown towards imitat- 
ing the good of others, but we should all be earn- 
est imitators of the Christ ; and we surely can be 
nothing better than imitators, however hard we may 
strain after certain effects produced by some other 
example. Every racial effect is imitative, a spell of 
hypnotism which seems to be whispering in the ears 
of men a likeness to each other with only slightly 
differentiated manners ; a difference so slight, how- 
ever, that neither the angels, nor men of a different 
race, could scarcely observe it. For underneath the 
veneer of civilization, the instincts of humanity are 
the same in men of every race except as each man 
feels the spiritual atmosphere of Life consciously. 
But one should never be content merely to mimic 
what the world implies to have been the spiritual 
nature of Jesus Christ. Surely each should desire 
to know for himself that the Nature of Spirit can 
only be comprehended by one's constantly seeking 
that perception of the emanation of Spirit which re- 



The Will 91 

veals itself to one, both inwardly and outwardly, as 
the true Christ-nature ; reveals Spirit as Nature, 
and Nature as Spirit. For mimicry is hypocrisy, a 
self-deception which leads an individual thus sub- 
jecting his soul to such an unworthy task to suspect 
himself, and probably to believe that Truth's Power 
is not for the present generation of man to use ; but, 
probably, one has tried to avoid admitting to himself 
the real reason for his having missed an acquaint- 
ance with his true Nature. 

Certainly any one who is only sporadically mak- 
ing genuine attempts at living the Christ-nature is 
liable to feel occasionally that he is under the ban of 
self-conviction. He can count every obstacle that 
has opposed his way to Truth, although later he 
understands that these obstacles were never insur- 
mountable, and that, by a consistently faithful ex- 
pression of what he now knows, the whole Field of 
Knowledge was as truly then as now ready for him 
to express. To be sure, it is not that kind of knowl- 
edge to which Bacon referred in his letter to his 
uncle. "I have taken all knowledge to be my 
province, " he wrote. And Macaulay said of Bacon's 
knowledge that it resembled the tent which the 
fairy, Paribanon, gave to Prince Ahmed : " Fold it 
and it seemed a toy for a lady's hand ; spread it, 
and the armies of powerful Sultans might repose 
beneath its shade." Bacon must have made strong 
drafts upon his will to have kept his intellectual 



92 The Hidden Treasure 

powers so forcefully active. Jowett, the Master of 
Balliol College, Oxford, must have combined will with 
resourceful talent, this combination thereby enabling 
him to say without believing that his egotism was 
offensive, or that it needed justification, " That 
which I do not know is not knowledge.' ' For talent 
does not work alone. A French proverb reads, 
"That which is not lucid is not French. " Yet a 
perfect lucidity depends upon Absolute Knowledge, 
to which Fount every one should gladly open his 
thought. It may be everywhere observed of man 
that one has to energize his will to accomplish any- 
thing of human importance, and one may be sure 
that he will not have that Knowledge which is es- 
sential to heavenly clearness without an active trust 
in the Divine Will present within him, which will, 
as the result of such trustfulness, then surprise one 
constantly with its spontaneous interpretation of 
Life for him. 



XIII 

ONE brings his thought a voluntary offering to 
the Host, and the Host is revealed in this spontane- 
ous manner : The Word of Life is like a heavenly 
stream of flowing tenderness recreating one every 
whit clean and whole. Every one can enjoy its 
potency by faithfully giving his thought to the Soul's 
Voice interpreting the Soul's blessedness to the in- 



The Will 93 

dividual ; by giving his attention to the heavenly 
conserving Voice of the Holy One, who never saw 
a blemish, never knew any sin in Himself, yet Who 
surely knows no other Self in the Universe. The 
temptation to rebel seems innate in everything — 
in both the things animate and the things inanimate. 
So we may be sure that the power to act is in 
everything, both the sensible and the insensible 
from an obvious view, and so to act spiritually — to 
respond to the spiritual thought of another, even if 
responding apparently but slightly ; and also that 
everything predicates some spiritual knowledge, 
although no one need expect an apparently dozing 
nature to rise except in response to Absolute 
Knowledge. 

The underlying desire for self-esteem in every 
one's heart is that from which each should begin at 
once to perceive his own spiritual nature. Even 
the good that one esteems in another will help one 
to a divine quickening ; for then the good which is 
always within one will respond to what is good in 
another. Unfortunately, the Light within one has 
but a pale significance whenever one pauses to 
compare it with the Light shed by another. It usu- 
ally seems far easier for another to think aright, 
and to carry this thought into clear, decisive action, 
than it does for one's self, particularly when it 
comes to a spiritual expression of Life which re- 
quires a constant devotion ; and even the well-gov- 



94 The Hidden Treasure 

erned thinker will probably admit that an inner 
temptation to laziness seems harder to resist than a 
temptation suggested by lazy muscles. But even 
with the latter temptation the mentality is sluggish, 
and so leaves the muscles often to the foolishness of 
running amuck. Yet let one remember that, if one 
will only always try to think clearly, he will soon 
be aware of habitually — naturally — relying upon 
the sole Source of intelligent Power. So soon as 
this becomes easily natural, it will spontaneously 
become the spiritual manifestation of Life through 
one consciously, so that there will not be required 
the voluntary effort one has hitherto made. In- 
stead there will be the joyful willingness of the 
Soul-sense uniting him to the Holy Spirit in 
everything which hath been made. Although 
one's religion at the beginning cannot be the 
product of hysteria, of mere emotionalism, neither 
can it be a cold, intellectual pursuit of Knowledge, 
for the Almightiness of Spirit is not like a book to be 
studied. On the contrary, it is the Spirit of Life to 
emulate, to manifest, to image. For first we try to 
emulate the Christ, then to manifest the Holy Will, 
and then to feel that imagery which all having Being 
should truly express. So we need not be afraid of 
imitating Christ, even though the human demand of 
the day is for originality — as Paul found it in Athens 
centuries ago. We should, indeed, all be imitators 
of Truth in each other, and always conscious of 



The Will 95 

our oneness in the single Way of Thought. And 
so we attain the Power of Christ through our knowl- 
edge of being begotten of the Will of Spirit only. 



ACTION 



I 



THAT action which may claim but one's momen- 
tary attention is sure to record itself in one's men- 
tality. If it be a thoughtless act, however good the 
result may appear, one cannot feel its blessedness 
in his own life. Assuredly every act should be in- 
telligently carried into effect, if one expects any 
return to his present advantage, or to his advantage 
later. For it is the thought itself — call it intention 
or interest, or whatever you will — which is in- 
stantly accounted in one's life, and if one's purpose 
and interest are both spiritually disposed, one is con- 
scious of the moment's hallowing blessedness. But 
whatever we do heedlessly, and so without a proper 
regard for the occasion, — 1 mean, without a devout 
regard for the work in hand as a divine opportunity, 
— will not have for us that helpful stimulus which 
one instantly knows to be spiritual, and which car- 
ries one's soul beyond its fanciful confines, thus to 
inspire one with the feeling of completeness. For 
whenever our affairs are devoutly carried to comple- 
tion, it is quickly perceivable that the real meaning 
of the infinite conception of Life comes to one al- 
ways from one's own soul's transcription of itself 



Action gy 

through Universal Nature, even while the All-nature 
is manifesting itself the Blessed Unit within one's 
Self. 

Evidently it is the unmorality of one's present 
mode of existence, — so paradoxically showing its signs 
by one's lack of whole-souled expression, — instead 
of one's immorality, which seems to write the minus 
sign before one's individual expression of Life. One 
therefore appears to be reversing Truth's absolute 
Sign of Life, while spending his days humanly try- 
ing to repair his mistakes. Carried by error to re- 
sults for which he wastes his day deploring them, he 
yet allows himself to be further carried through a 
way lined by spectral fears which suggest to him 
the absence of that which would supply every need, 
naming these lean fancies which haunt him penury, 
weakness, shame, sorrow, suffering, the scrimping 
of selfish friendship, and death. These substance- 
less shades of thought also suggest the obvious fact 
that all flesh lacks self-sustainment, although, de- 
spite their subtlety, the true Light shines through 
their suggestions, reminding one of that abundance, 
strength, joy, peace, and life, which could be one's 
own from the True Consciousness. Circumstances 
which are disagreeable always seem to have intel- 
lectual ghosts, for they manifest themselves with 
the same specific subtlety of suggestion too fre- 
quently for one's comfort, dominating one through 
wretched moods when irritability, jealousy, envy, 



g8 The Hidden Treasure 

vanity, and every undesirable thing which pertains 
to human temper appear to have full sway over 
one's faculties. This seems a horrible form of ob- 
session, inviting as it does the condemnation of both 
friends and foes, besides belittling the inner man to 
himself while he either sulks or sputters, or seems 
hopelessly depressed, according to his mood which 
is then unwilling to be dissuaded from its absorption 
of him by his reason. But one's speechless or 
speaking torment departs, effaces itself, whenever 
one recalls Truth's absolute Sign of Christ. " I am 
the way, the truth, the life," one hears as an in- 
spiriting reminder ; and the realization of all that this 
statement includes proves the vehicle which carries 
one conscious of the everpresent, everlasting supply 
for every need. One then allows himself to feel 
the heavenly touch because he is entrusting to his 
own heart its office as the divine point of contact. 
And then his heart is no longer feeble from attrition, 
but is mighty instead, nourished as it is from the 
circulation of heavenly love, and so by its own 
knowledge of its power to gather into its circulation 
all that is good, and to give through this circulation 
its heavenly Treasure to every one who will accept 
the Treasure. But all this is to be done through 
one's spontaneous feeling. For Truth never comes 
with a grand air to say to error, " Get you gone ; I 
am Truth." Truth, however, is a great quencher 
of pretences, although not knowing that it is so. 



Action 99 



II 



The ages have presented a longer road to a knowl- 
edge which forbids a present realization of the true 
ego, until to-day when there are pages and pages of 
fancies to sift, with foot-notes, and indices, and 
wonderful bindings, all devoted to explaining the 
fallibility of human science ; to recording the con- 
ventions of humanity, its conservation of sorrow 
and want, and the unsuccessful struggles of that 
poor inner victim, man himself. So man has come 
to this present day of civilization, which some writer 
has termed a ladylike age. At first it seems both 
irreverent and impractical to turn from all this te- 
dious outlay of human nerve, of mental dissipation, 
which has exhausted the energy of the ages, to de- 
vote one's self — moreover, to instruct all others to 
devote themselves — to the Knowledge of Spirit. 
There have been many institutions devoted to the 
same purpose, and all kinds of single and collective 
attempts to discover the Will of God, which men 
sometimes — indeed, usually — obviously prefer to 
regard as the Great Mystery. Man has secluded 
himself, and so excluded his brother, for the attain- 
ment of spiritual Knowledge, but no report has come 
to others of his translation to the skies as a conse- 
quence, while the greatest demonstrator of them all 
said, " No man hath ascended into heaven, but he 
that descended out of Heaven, even the Son of man, 



ILrfCLl 



ioo The Hidden Treasure 

which is in heaven/' Refining influences have been 
diligently sought as a means of grace. The finer 
works of man appear to question, " How can one 
expect to have the taste sufficient for a realization 
of Heaven's beauties, of Heaven's refinement, un- 
less his human sight has had the cultivating, refin- 
ing influence of aesthetics? " Doubtless asstheticism 
has many times brought about an acquaintanceship 
which has led individuals to a truer communion, 
thus proving the means to a divine accomplishment, 
but he who is to write his record of Life infinitely 
has to be constant to his Light and watchful of his 
Christ. For the absolute line of Thought gathers 
the individual line of Thought unto itself, and its 
grace is the grace which heals all hurts, since the 
human dream no longer entices one. 

Some inadvertency of the moment may cost one 
bitter hours in payment thereof. That Spirit which 
requires the All-mind for its Heaven surely requires 
also our entire allegiance. Moreover, this expression 
of the All-mind one should reverently know to be 
the Self of All-nature. We ought not to lose our 
natural happiness because of our obliviousness to 
our spiritual ordering of sight, hearing, feeling — 
living. The work of Spirit opens before one. " My 
Father worketh hitherto, and I work," is the Christ- 
rule of action. Let us, then, see Spirit's Power 
shown in the rejoicing thought of every one ; and is 
there anything more beautifying? The kings of 



Action 1 01 

earth would never excuse that inattention to their 
presence which man, whose likeness of the heav- 
enly majesty of Selfhood excuses in himself to the 
true Self — his Host. A courtier, representing his 
king, would resent such presumptuous negligence 
from one who professed to regard this king as the su- 
preme power of the land. But man, Heaven's rep- 
resentative, seems unaware that he should not only 
require himself to attend wholly to Heaven, without 
forgetting its Power within himself for an instant, 
but should also require others to attend likewise to 
this Presence within themselves. 



Ill 

EVERYTHING has its sentiency for joy or suffering. 
One cannot truly say even of the stick, when he 
once understands life, that it is dead — has no re- 
storative power within itself. For there is that 
within it which enables it to cleave sensibly to its 
own concreteness, so that it can unite itself when it 
awakens from its present apparent obliviousness to 
that which it claims to belong, — either as perma- 
nently substanced, or else as merely an unsub- 
stantial condition, although the latter would not al- 
ways appear to it in the same material form, and 
surely not the former, as the spiritual substance, 
until it understands its own recreative essence to be 
the increate Power of Life. 



102 The Hidden Treasure 

To be instantly alert means that one is constantly 
alert. One cannot happily, successfully, dabble 
with spiritual values. One should always be men- 
tally alive with the increate Eternal instead of pas- 
sively dozing along with a dissipating, dissolving, 
uncreate sense of existence. For one's intelligent 
attention should be given to every effort, to every 
event, pertaining to his day. Whenever one does 
this he agrees with Spirit's leading, and does not 
wait an instant to act. The heavenly Will thus be- 
comes a steady stream of Light through one's whole 
manifestation of Life. Soul and Body have become 
one. Nerves and muscles are now truly consecrated 
instead of merely affecting to be so. The knees of 
the heart move with the grace of the Holy Spirit, 
while the arms of the heart reach forth with this 
Spirit's love to embrace the children of Heaven. 
Whatever has seemed written unhappily and un- 
kindly on one's heart is obliterated, for the shining 
Word of Life enlightens one's whole being. Human 
partialities are speedily converted into a love which 
is always fresh and fearless because it is self-exis- 
tent and, therefore, self-sustained. Whereas one's 
partialities have hitherto excluded everything not of 
one's particular heaven, — such a mental attitude 
leaving one with only feeble human arms to offer for 
the embracing of one's beloved, — now, thanks to 
the obliteration of one's finite sense of lines, one has 
the eternally gathering love of the Holy Spirit 



Action 103 

reaching from one's conscious heart with its enfold- 
ing love. 

One quickly learns his accountableness to the 
moment, and also learns that indecision is fatal to 
happiness. To do, or not to do ? It is to do, surely. 
There is nothing so negative in one's life that one 
can, with comfort, ignore it. This single, eternal mo- 
ment is the definite one. Is it right to do this thing, 
or is it wrong ? One instantly knows. At least, 
one should instantly know. Can one give to it a 
heavenly interest? Would the doing bring good to 
all ? Do the angels of Heaven approve ? And one 
should be able to answer questions of corresponding 
import at once without the necessity of putting them 
to himself. The moment never waits for any one. 
Opportunities never retreat nor stand still. One 
trusts the Host within the hosts, therefore con- 
sciously trusting the hosts, and, whether waking or 
sleeping, one should be sure that the Spirit Who 
never slumbers nor sleeps will carry him through the 
action, and carry, moreover, the action with him as 
a divine opportunity, — an opportunity capable of 
carrying itself, of being self-fluent in his life, of 
being a blessing to every one, whether it be known 
in detail to every one or not. 

But this will not appear as true if judged by a 
merely superficial knowledge of Life. Nevertheless, 
there is that within the consciousness of each cre- 
ated thing which will have felt this action, and 



104 The Hidden Treasure 

which will have helped man, although his dull re- 
sponse may have added to that human fire, so caus- 
ing him greater human suffering, — that fire which 
seems somewhat like a fever consuming the corrup- 
tion due to previous sluggishness in obvious direc- 
tions. For this true action will touch even the most 
degraded specimen of the race to call him to a bet- 
ter, a more intelligent, accounting of himself to him- 
self, to the Universe, to his Thought-life. Surely, 
it is through one's intelligent conception of Life, 
through one's spiritual Knowledge of Life, that one 
shall realize what has been termed the second birth. 
Through the fulness of this realization will one re- 
turn to his natural perception of Life. But the 
apparent interregnum, devoid of heavenly sense in 
the absolute, will not be spent by man in an entire 
unconsciousness of Spirit's ruling ; in an utter ignor- 
ance of Omniscience's concreteness as the only 
Mind with which one can ever know Life. That 
vagueness which has seemed to blur and blight 
one's faculties disappears while one is giving one's 
whole attention constantly to Spirit's absoluteness 
within one's self. Then whatever one has of 
Heaven to teach him, whether it appear of high or 
low human estate, one will surely accept in the ful- 
ness of its instructive Power from everything that 
lives ; that has creation ; and that, in one form or 
another, although presenting nothing more subtan- 
tial than an earth-worm from its conception of being, 



Action 105 

will continue visibly manifested, since it cannot be 
wholly effaced. So everything should speak with 
Truth's Voice to one's spiritual hearing ; should 
reveal Truth to him who is trying to transform all 
things from their Divine Cause into Absolute Life. 
Into the things of earth and heaven one then faith- 
fully infuses the heavenly Breath, the only Breath 
of Being, and no magician's wand could so wonder- 
fully effect what the worker feels is being wrought 
through his entire being. The fear of death and 
life passes away ; for this fear is all there is to pass 
away. The dread of separation vanishes. The 
Eternal abides in one's very own Thought, wherein 
it has always abode, his Substance of All-good, if 
he had only realized that its increate Power was his 
to use. The atmosphere is Universal now. What- 
ever he sees reminds him of the Presence Universal. 



IV 

I ONCE knew an artist who, whether he used 
crayon or oil, if he was only content to do the mer- 
est sketch of any one, to feature solely the essential, 
portrayed, even to a stranger, the character of the 
individual before him. He had mastered the thought 
of the individual to portray it accurately with these 
few lines of pencil or brush. Here was the individ- 
ual's mentality speaking to you from the eyes, the 
lips, the nostril — from his habitual pose. Even 



106 The Hidden Treasure 

the ears proclaimed their purpose. But let this 
artist undertake to do more with light and shade, or 
let him but attempt to give the fleshly tints to his 
work, and the individual's atmosphere eluded his 
hand. It failed to respond to his touch. So this is 
the way with our mentality when we regard it as 
all-divine. And it needs no other treatment than 
the featuring of one's own mentality for another, 
whenever one is fully cognizant of the singleness of 
Spirit, and the work is done. Yes, the work is 
done, since it has had its beautiful finish from the 
beginning. One only sees what the Soul really 
contains, and so has not to add one iota of effort for 
any furthering of a likelier work. 

To keep the moment accountable for itself is 
important, but each one of us has this to do for him- 
self. The desire for something alien to Truth should 
be unknown. Calculation, expediency, is never 
needed for softening an occasion. The simple Truth 
is easily stated, and is always divinely helpful. 
Still, be sure that nothing else but Truth shall radiate 
from you whatever the occasion, for every moment 
is Truth's. Yet it may often seem more difficult to 
see the rebuilding of people than their several kinds 
of soul-poverty. Whenever this is the case, it will 
seem much easier to say, " I am sorry for you," 
than to work with the individual for his genuine 
happiness. For one can say that he is sorry, and 
leave another who needs, and to whom should be 



Action ioj 

given, the quickening word, with little further 
interest in him. 

But the one who is not sorry for another, who 
is unfortunate solely because of being unaware of 
the blessedness offered all, though human circum- 
stances are most depressing, must stand with his 
man until he has done his work of acquainting that 
man with his right to present happiness, and also 
shown him the way to keep it if he will only walk 
therein. Moreover, the one who is not sorry for 
God's children observes the multitude, and how 
every one is nursing his specific grievance ; how 
each one images the woes of the son of man while 
obviously unconscious of his Power as the child of 
God, His Son ; and thus one observes men's soul- 
affairs for the sake of helping them. But his vision 
quickly gathers the real for its true perspective. 
He, therefore, never doubts that all Life is affluent 
with Heaven's plenty, so that every one could rest 
in his natural Self, nor doubts that every one 
should radiate the joy of the Universal Self — the 
Self of the Soul all-divine. 

One certainly cannot ignore the splendor of the 
heavenly Light in any one, and consciously retain 
the splendor of his own soul's Light. Nor can one 
enter closely into the assumed defects of men with- 
out assuming such defects one's self. Then one's 
knowledge soon appears deficient, and so one fails 
to see the living Spirit as the only Spirit of man. 



108 The Hidden Treasure 

Giving such credence to human misery, one becomes 
depressed himself, and so sees no clear way for 
helping others to overcome earthly anguish. Then 
the complaints of others, who seem deserving of 
better things, become the soul's engrossing cry 
within. The suffering of the world thus obscures 
one's vision. 

" So grief assailed 
My heart at hearing this, for well I knew 
Suspended in that Limbo many a soul 
Of mighty worth." 

This might be the cry of one's human mood, but 
such a mood should not be allowed to pervade one's 
soul as the infection of another, or of many. One 
should feel spiritually authorized to infuse others 
with his own joy instead. Better to risk losing 
another's friendship than to fail one's own service- 
able exercise of power for him — for all others. 
Compared with one's living his sense of Truth, his 
preaching concerning the truth of Truth is but 
slightly effective. The written or spoken lines may 
be construed in as many different ways as there are 
readers or hearers, but the pure, strong, inmost 
thought, quickened by one's consciousness of its 
power as Truth revealing itself, not only through 
the thinker but through another also to whom this 
thought is addressed, can carry but a single mean- 
ing. It is certainly a revelation of Truth's abso- 



Action 109 

luteness. For it reveals the increate Spirit, and so 
the immutability of Spirit's world in the life of 
every one to-day. 



PHILO JUD^US wisely declared, " For it is natural 
that God should do everything at once, not merely 
by uttering a command, but by even thinking about 
it." Reading Philo's argument concerning the crea- 
tion, one notes his effort to know Spirit spiritually, 
and notes that, because of this effort, when he 
touched upon the things of Spirit he was spiritually 
led. Assuredly, any one who realizes his own 
power for absolute good can understand, what Philo 
himself probably inferred, that God's work is 
Truth's simple exercise, and that this work accord- 
ingly has within itself the whole of Life's meaning. 
Probably, the only thing left as questionable will be 
concerning one's self ; the verity of one's intuitions ; 
one's use in the Divine Conception of Life. Yet 
some will wisely see that, being possessed of the 
requisite intelligence to comprehend the fact that 
this Divine Conception conceives itself also by its 
very manner of conceiving, it naturally follows that 
this ability to understand both Creator and creation 
as Thought manifesting itself places one on the same 
plane of imagery as that occupied by the heavenly 
Mind. And so it will be to one a simply constructed 



no The Hidden Treasure 

sentence which states man as the heavenly image 
and likeness of the All-divine in his true Nature. 

The true Nature has only to declare itself as the 
natural conception of Life to have orderly Being. 
So with this divine imagery, which man seems so 
carefully to conceal within a mentality which finds 
it difficult to deliver itself fully, whenever one under- 
stands it to be his whole, sound interpretation of 
Life, precisely as Spirit is delivering itself through 
the universality of the creation, whatever the 
appearance of the creation, one knows this divine 
imagery to be as absolute for the Universe to ex- 
press — since the Universe, regarded either as Mind 
or Body, is really the embodiment of the Divine 
Mind — as tor Spirit itself. But confusion spreads 
in a twinkling whenever one resorts to a mode of 
gradual interpretation based on the human plane of 
imagery. So man continues his argument, and the 
apparent gist of it may be thus construed: "But 
my reason tells me that there is no positive revela- 
tion of Truth to any one to-day. That revelator 
does not appear who can also demonstrate such a 
theory practically. If this doctrine be true, then 
why cannot this illusive heaven and earth be imme- 
diately dispelled? Truth should demonstrate itself 
reasonably ; else why was reason given us ? " There 
is usually a preference shown for progression rather 
than for the immediate fulfilment of Spirit, yet 
where does one find a sign of anything which re- 



Action in 

sembles progressive Truth ? As to whether the man 
of to-day is better than the man of antiquity will 
probably continue a mooted question for ages to 
come. It is argued that man is more refined in his 
personality, yet when judged by the standard set by 
the Mosaic Law, or by that set by men and women 
in their judgment of others, one will have to confess 
that the cardinal sins have not apparently lost a jot 
of their unholy activity, and that Sorrow and Want 
are presenting no feebler claims upon the personal 
life of man than were their claims upon the race in 
olden times. Moreover, with the greater outward 
polish, it is obvious that the tooth of suffering has 
lost none of its sharpness for a bite into human 
vitals. Indeed, knowledge has seemed to have 
dipped this tooth into a more corrosive poison than 
formerly, or it may be that present day things 
appear more real. The Spartan boy wore his cloak 
so as to conceal both his theft and his wound, but 
to-day there seems no cloak large enough to cover 
the sin and the wound both. Moreover, the wound 
betrays the sin, and we have all exposed the wound. 
For the cloak which conceals the sin seems to have 
hidden man's spiritual knowledge from his sight. To 
many it is a pleasure to read occasionally, perhaps at 
stated intervals set by some religious sentiment, the 
words of one whose whole life was given to instruct- 
ing men concerning the beauty and holiness of their 
present existence, so that they might keep this beauty 



ii2 The Hidden Treasure 

and holiness always in view. Yet these words will 
appeal only to one's intellectuality without enlight- 
ening one's heart, unless one receive them for their 
constant inspiration as he demonstrates them in the 
midst of his kind — his kind universally. Some 
formula of Paul's often proves a medium of grace by 
reminding one of the spiritual nature of things. 
This message of his to the Romans is helpful, " For 
that which may be known of God is manifest unto 
them : for God manifested it unto them." And the 
words which follow remove every limitation that 
one might possibly ascribe to the foregoing message : 
" For the invisible things of him since the creation 
of the world are clearly seen, being perceived 
through the things that are made, even his ever- 
lasting power and divinity." And he adds, " That 
they may be without excuse." 

Thus Paul viewed Life, and thus reviewing it 
charged man with neglecting the things of Life be- 
cause of his not perceiving them from this natural 
point of view, since there was no reason created 
with him to excuse him from not seeing the things 
of Life, things which he believed to be invisible 
solely because the natural point of view was unreal 
to him. Still Paul did not wholly reject reason, but 
used it, as he probably believed, consistently, and 
probably reckoned it among the common-sense bless- 
ings as something he could use for the better inform- 
ing of his way. His intuitions were spiritual, but 



Action 113 

his was not that temperament which bent itself to 
patient teaching, and so, when denouncing the lit- 
eral instinct of man, he never spared the beast. 
Yet, doubtless, the man to whom he showed impa- 
tience, to whom he gave no patient hearing, was 
the one who accepted, either bestially or with bo- 
vine placidity, the animal nature as natural to the 
exclusion of the angelic. 

" Can they who say the Host should be descried 
By sense, define a body glorified ? " 

Paul asked for the glorified body for all. Nat- 
urally enough, no one really wants to image 
his life abnormally. He would preferably efface 
the transparency upon which such figures cast 
their light and shade. Indeed, he would prob- 
ably preferably wear the radiant garment of the 
angel, that garment which would clothe his thought 
with its inspiring Light — provided he could only 
wear it and retain a few earthly tastes and hab- 
its. Naturally, one thinks well of himself. It 
is divinely necessary that he should so do since it 
is divinely natural ; happily, moreover, one is not 
always aware of the hideousness of that nature which, 
after all, is only an inferential delusion. But the 
one who has walked the way of Knowledge with 
others prefers insight to delusion. For the seem- 
ingly incurable " fixed idea" is manifestly a prefer- 
ence for a form of delusion ; but one now well 



ii4 The Hidden Treasure 

knows, in order to avoid the subtlety of that which 
appears as Mind, — although as a mind given to 
many regretful memories, and so often conscious of 
preying on itself in the most horrible manner, — 
that one must turn with a resolute constancy to the 
wholeness of the Divine Expression which is per- 
vaded and covered by the Mind Absolute. 



VI 

A FABLED Argos could not keep the necessary 
number of eyes open so as to prevent the spell of an 
entire somnolency, and so failed to watch over the 
metamorphosed condition of another, which, under 
the obsession of still another's will, he had believed 
that he could do. According to the terms of obses- 
sion only a stronger will, or the employing of some 
subterfuge, is needed to dominate a weaker will, 
though it is also believed that this obsession will 
yield to an even stronger personality than that dom- 
inating. One may deceive himself regarding his 
constancy in spiritually focussing the things of life. 
For one may believe that he has a hundred eyes de- 
voted to a watchfulness of his spiritual affairs, and 
that if he permit some of them to go to sleep he 
shall not have reason to deplore such yielding. So 
he believes while perhaps overlooking the mercurial 
piping of that which he calls temperament — his na- 
ture — which blows hot or cold, according to his 



Action 115 

varying moods ; blows hot from some inward anx- 
iety, blows cold from the chill of indifference, 
until he is weary from so much puffing, and what 
sight is left becomes feeble or heavy-eyed from men- 
tal drowsing. Then the broad, deep, high fluency 
of his thought seems to have lost itself, or else been 
transformed into a trickling stream of fancied good, 
so slender that it is ready to break from its atten- 
uation, thus appearing no more dependable than a 
rope of sand, of which it is suggestive. One has to 
admit sight for a single direction, but how broad is 
this direction ! And how infinitely broad is that 
sight which can cover it ! It is the sight of the sin- 
gle-eyed, the Sight which creates the Light. Or 
would you say that it is the Light which creates the 
Sight? But we should always remember that Sight 
and Light are increate — and likewise the Unit. 



VII 

IT is a great mistake for one who has some slight 
knowledge of spiritual results, derived from an equal 
knowledge of spiritual Power, to expect physical re- 
sults from spiritual treatment ; for every benefit 
thus derived is of the spiritual Nature, and should 
therefore be regarded as permanent. To watch the 
functions of the body rather than the grace of the 
Soul is harmful to the interest of the individual. It 
is quite true that when Truth's beneficence touches 



u6 The Hidden Treasure 

a man by his invitation the sense of physical dis- 
tress vanishes from his conception of Life ; for the 
conception wherefrom the crucifying trials seem to 
evolve themselves disappears in an exact proportion 
to one's absorption into Spirit, — although an obvious 
exemption from physical troubles for some who are 
accounted irreligious may seem to refute this asser- 
tion. For to be more and more absorbed in Spirit is 
to increase more and more one's knowledge of the 
true Self, of one's real Being. It is in this manner 
that one comes to the understanding of how God gives 
the increase. It is in this manner that the forceful oc- 
cupation of one's thought by some undesirable as- 
sumption as thought is dissipated. And in this man- 
ner pain as an obsession loses its grip whenever one 
is firm enough to try to image for himself the abso- 
luteness of a will baptized in Truth. Then, indeed, 
the heavens open for one, and one is only conscious 
of radiating an atmosphere which glorifies one's 
whole being ; one then feels only his indestructible 
unity with the Self-existent Being — with the in- 
create Being. 

But one has not lost one's individual conception 
of Life. Instead, one is now regaining it. The 
Holy Spirit will never absorb one any more than it 
already has done. This absorption proves, more- 
over, the vital influx. Necessarily, to image Spirit 
can be done in but one way : one should instantly 
perceive one's own universal efflux from the spirit- 



Action ny 

ual Source. Then one perceives that his absorption 
of Truth's influx is quick, strong, pure. The influx 
and efflux of Spirit thus become the all-absorbing 
interest, the activity wherein one feels that he lives 
and moves and has his Being. So as one thus 
works, continuing to go with Spirit's current of pure 
desire, of perfect effectiveness, he rejoices to note 
that his efflux is more nearly spontaneous, and, 
therefore, far less the result of a voluntary directing 
of will from mere negation to what, for lack of a 
better term, he has named the Will of God. 

One surely regains his true Selfhood by his 
absorption in the Mind of the Spirit. The va- 
garious mentality, which had seemed to thwart 
his perfect expression of Life, then ceases to 
torment him. Even the moments of stumbling 
by the way, which have hitherto written their 
doleful records on time for a frequent repetition, no 
longer distort his point of view. He has already 
learned the unwisdom of judging things humanly 
either in himself or in others. So he no longer tries 
to account for his occasional lapses from grace. For 
if he suffers, he knows that he himself is largely re- 
sponsible for the miserable conditions which seem to 
involve him in suffering. Heaven has not been test- 
ing his strength by any form of temptation; nor was 
he unprepared with the essential Power of Life to 
withstand weakness of any kind. Therefore, he 
declines to argue with the Active reasoning element 



n 8 The Hidden Treasure 

of the human soul, although he is now aware that 
it would not, could not, fail of proving him inconsis- 
tent were he so to do, as he already knows that the 
last thing to be effaced from his mentality must be 
the logical quality which seems to serve as the basic 
element of human mind. 



VIII 

CERTAINLY for one to deny the existence of what 
to one, professedly, is not existent is more paradox- 
ical than to go straight on with one's conception of 
Truth despite some appearance of weakness. To 
account for error to friendship was never Heaven's 
requirement of man or woman. For one's happi- 
ness, one has only to account to the selfsame Truth 
in all, and this because of one's universal regard of 
Truth. To be concrete in effort is to be consciously 
universal in result, as one will then start with the 
Self-gathered Thought — whatever may appear hu- 
manity's charge against one. No attempt at a per- 
sonal concentration will result in anything which is 
divinely helpful. One may try to withdraw his 
thought from the world for the purpose of devoting it 
to Heaven only to believe himself pursued by world- 
liness, and Heaven still remote. One can forsake 
nothing. Instead, one should recreate his world, 
translate his personal thought of it into the individ- 
ual, and so view Life manifest as Spirit's Universe, 



Action up 

thus to gather all into his keeping, and, moreover, to 
gather all to work with him even as accompanying 
angels — the angels indeed. One will certainly 
be disappointed if he expects his thought to be flu- 
ent, or his heart's blood to circulate freely with the 
natural circulation of Life, which is so essential to 
comfort and strength, should he not agree with the 
Infinite Heart's activity pulsating, and pulsating uni- 
versally, within himself, instead of withdrawing 
from most things for the purpose of giving himself 
to a specific few. 

This would seem to call for a tremendous human 
effort, but when one finally comes to the point 
whence he looks over the field of human knowledge 
without struggling for its detail, looks from the be- 
ginning of that inspirational Knowledge which is the 
divine right of every one, he is aware that he has 
been allowing his faculties to be carried through ev- 
ery form of generative speculation ; along some lines 
which required the fiercest resistance ; and along 
other lines the stagnation of which seemed the very 
extinction of his vitality. Whether he had resisted 
or surrendered to the subtlety of such an environ- 
ment, he has learned, would not have changed the 
obvious rules governing it. So now he understands 
that there must be no shrinking from the spiritual 
requirements of the divine effort — an effort which 
should be actively, instead of forcefully, made. He 
learns from experience that this effort does not 



120 The Hidden Treasure 

require the extinction of his individuality for any 
furtherance of the Divine Will towards his absorp- 
tion, but that it requires of him that he shall keep 
his thought in constant touch with the Heart-centre 
of all Life, so that he shall constantly feel its wis- 
dom and its peace inspiring him for the work of 
consciously uniting himself with all that is univer- 
sally divine. And so instead of giving his attention 
to the uncertainties of Life, as voiced through his 
friends' daily arguments, he should feel the sustain- 
ing Power within his own thought, and know that 
the same sustaining Power has its abiding-place in 
the thought of every one. 

Therefore into every deed of the day, into every 
minute of the hours, into every second of the min- 
utes, and into every breath of his being, should one 
consciously and diligently express the unity of God 
in His angels as the Power carrying one's work. 
Both the visible and the invisible, to the human 
conception of Life, should be kept alive by the ten- 
derest cherishing of one's thought ; be to one the 
unity of Power, and so the very Essence of that 
which could never, from the human viewpoint, be 
regarded as will, since it is unconscious of any oppo- 
sition, or of any forceful dominion by means of its own 
Power. The absence of all opposition in the spirit- 
ual working of thought is the reverse of what the 
assertiveness of humanity implies as having to meet 
and overcome. The duality of power, raised and 



Action 121 

fostered by argument, although never really exist- 
ing, ceases largely as one seeks to gather his own 
thought to its universal expression. Surely this 
gathering of one's thought through and for universal 
expression is the very antithesis of an attempted 
personal concentration. 

The nearest approach to a successful^) concen- 
tration of the specific human will is unfortunately 
illustrated in the monomaniac, with the obvious 
result of deranging his faculties. This is, moreover, 
the sad result to be frequently noted among those 
who have only a superficial knowledge of the power 
working through all thought, and who consequently 
fail to apply it in an entirely spiritual manner. One 
seems then to have resolved himself into the essence 
of some single mania whither his mentality is fre- 
quently directed, his anxious friends believing his 
thought to be wholly applied to such pursuit. That 
it really is not, however, is proven by the success- 
ful work so often done by mental workers for such 
unfortunates, who gather what appears as either 
subversive to, or unconscious of, the individual 
interest, and effect, if nothing more, a diversion. 
Often, however, a genuine service is rendered, if 
their friends do not put obstacles in the way in the 
form of diagnostics, which counteract the work done 
by the mental worker along spiritual lines by sug- 
gesting, perhaps only silently, the form of limitation 
to the individual from which he would preferably be 



122 . The Hidden Treasure 

free. This method, of course, only intensifies his 
fears — his inner fears — for usually the individual 
thus obsessed seems utterly unaware that he is not 
expressing his natural mind, and wonders why his 
friends pay so much more attention to his peculiari- 
ties than to their own. But there has obviously 
been an inner coinciding with the subtlety of unseen 
factors until the normal mental balance of humanity 
appears difficult to readjust, or else fails utterly of 
readjustment. For one should always know him- 
self possessed of that which would be accounted 
best by normal humanity. That is to say, one 
should not allow one's self to believe it at all difficult 
to enjoy the normal well-being of any phase of con- 
sciousness wherein he chooses to continue a form of 
existence. It .should not, however, be his boast 
that he can demonstrate abnormally over human 
conditions and preserve his humanity. Each phase 
of consciousness, doubtless, has its laws which rep- 
resent a government with a standard set for certain 
harmonious results. So it necessarily follows that 
for one's human estate one should embody that 
which is fluent in him from the Universal, as at 
one's humanly mental best he is always aware that 
the Spirit of All-being is the Creator of what he 
perhaps terms the heavens and the earth. This 
knowledge of itself, if observed throughout one's 
daily affairs, shall surely quicken in one ultimately 
the mental quest for that full understanding which 
can certainly be regarded by all as Absolute Truth. 



Action 123 

Usually, however, when a genuine service is 
rendered another who is obviously devitalizing him- 
self with sundry manias, there is the conscious 
quickening of the individual into an intentional ab- 
sorption in Spirit. For one should always be 
consciously alive to the divine purpose of his think- 
ing. It is always safer to give one's self completely 
to this absorption ; but this cannot be done by a 
merely passive yielding of one's mentality, as there 
is always the danger present in such cases of some 
subtle claim of power, which has previously had one 
in its grip, further tightening its hold upon one. 
One can only perceive his own absorption of the 
Spirit of All-life by perceiving also his own thought's 
receptiveness of Spirit, which will instantly return to 
him an active realization that the eternal things are 
the actual things to-day, invisible though they seem 
in both essence and substance, while the appearance 
of things embodies chiefly a mind obviously astray. 
In other words, this surrender of one's will to the 
forceless, though active, Will of Heaven is not really 
made until one has his thought ready to give with 
it. And then comes the infinite realization that 
one's true Thought comprises the active Will of 
Spirit — is Spirit itself. 



124 The Hidden Treasure 



IX 



ONE may be tempted by either pride or human 
self-love to reflect sadly on the sacrifices necessary 
in order to achieve spiritually ; but to be occupied 
with translating the unsubstantial and fleshly things 
of life into their natural status as substantial and 
permanent does not call for self-pity, although the 
things themselves have not yet expressed the least 
inclination towards accepting an established sense 
of Being. In the midst of some human quibbling 
over one's relationship to God, one may appear as 
stating something less than absolute respecting the 
Divine Nature, but, so far as one's written and 
spoken language will permit him, he should stead- 
fastly express his consciousness of unity instead of 
a belief in a mere relationship with the Holy Spirit, 
— which unity can only be expressed by his earnest 
desire to be one with all in the Life of Spirit. One 
may also appear to be offering some bribe of health 
or happiness to others in his desire to convert them 
wholly, — to turn their thought absolutely to the 
Source whence Understanding proceeds. Yet one 
should explicitly state — the one who accepts or 
adopts the office of fellow-helper — that the sole cure 
of a man or a woman comes as the heavenly Light 
to complete an effacement of a self based on a per- 
sonal expression of Life in preference to the individ- 
uality founded on the Eternal. All the minor, 



Action 125 

trifling rules, which seem so prejudicial to one's 
personal interests, either for or against them, will 
have no power over one while he acknowledges to 
himself that there is but one Cause of all Being, 
and that this Cause is the everlasting fulness of 
Spirit revealing itself through his own manifestation 
of selfhood whenever man is ready to heed fully the 
revelation, — that Cause which, if it could possibly 
fail in the exactitude of its purpose manifested 
throughout its entire expression, even throughout 
the World of Appearances, would extinguish all 
being. 

Still man appears attached to his worries like the 
proverbial dog to his bone, but the chief difficulty 
arises from his own unwillingness to detach himself 
from his obvious troubles. He even implies that it 
would prove but a futile attempt at taking the 
Kingdom of Heaven by violence were he to abdicate 
his personal view of Life by taking the divine as 
the real standpoint ; and usually men honestly 
believe that God is not yet ready to have them 
work directly from His strength instead of depend- 
ing upon some material prop, concerning the exist- 
ence of which, one later learns, He at least has never 
dreamed. Even the years of an intentionally faith- 
ful service have apparently to accumulate before 
one is fully aware that though his single effort, 
unite himself as he will with others, should be 
earnestly continued, yet because of his absolute 



126 The Hidden Treasure 

unity with all, the full translation of what appears 
as humanly rendered cannot be carried into divinity 
while the inner sense of any one appears subjectively, 
and therefore objectively, at variance with itself. 
So man appears to be his brother's keeper in adver- 
sity, but the united faithfulness of men, aided con- 
sciously by the angels, will not hold forgiveness 
necessary for other creatures, for other men, who 
have not yet gladly, and so have not yet willingly, 
accepted a knowledge of their power in its simple 
directness, but continue to speak of the gloom cast 
by Heaven's intention upon their way, and of their 
present helplessness as if it were induced by the 
Almighty for their future good. They evidently 
try to be honest believers in their assumption of 
what the Nature of Heaven is like, and so are given 
to regarding anything at variance with their opinions 
as oracularly fanciful. Nearly spent, we have all 
peered through notional hedges upon the ridiculous 
doctrines of those who were performing inside ; but 
we have not all learned how to focus the mental 
eye upon our own personal performances. And so 
we have not all learned that the single mania of 
every individual is that of being a doctrinaire. Every 
one seems to have some specific notion of his own 
whereon it would not seem difficult to found a school 
of theology were it not for the inner modesty — 
humility? — or the inner unwillingness to take so 
much trouble for an unappreciative race ; to mortify 



Action i2y 

one's self for the small result of a few possible 
intercommunists. 

But every thoughtful individual has doubtless 
observed that, although his plans were religiously 
made for a certain direction of interest, they were 
as often set aside in some unavoidable manner, and 
the work carried as if with an obvious deliberation 
for his interest, — as though the angels themselves 
were dealing with him kindly, — which service later, 
when the season of anxiety was over, he gratefully 
acknowledged. The probability is that one regards 
but slightingly the legions of angels attending all his 
ways, although he is giving to the human span of 
life an intentional spiritual positiveness ; that is to 
say, one seeks positively the directing of the Al- 
mighty. But he has not probably believed that he 
could trust Heaven fully to deal with his mundane 
affairs ; still, possibly, the things that he has be- 
lieved so mundane, and, consequently, as only 
humanly established, have been transfigured as by 
a miracle, and he has known himself to be as secure 
and well-supplied as if all his prearrangements had 
stood the test of both time and circumstance. Or 
one may have believed that it was necessary for 
him to look after his earthly affairs with a diligent 
eye himself, although still trusting in Heaven for its 
blessing, and so has been astonished by the magni- 
tude of the blessings, unexpected as a whole, which 
have come into his life — perhaps he has said, un- 
deserved by him ; and certainly one accomplishes 



128 The Hidden Treasure 

nothing without the positive application of himself, 
— of all he is and has. Or one may have had 
some work to do which has required all his power, 
while he continued to trust in Heaven's conscious 
directing of his way in Truth, and in its love to sup- 
ply his life with intelligence and the means neces- 
sary to possess the Kingdom. His Treasure he gave 
to the Kingdom, and continues to give it, and its 
wealth of revealing is for him an ever-present sup- 
ply. Therefore, his thought never comes to the 
point of destitution in any form, and so precisely 
what he has in thought is happily embodied in his 
life. From personal conflict one has probably 
learned the wisdom of keeping his thought free. 
The discussion of what pertains to him as rights has, 
therefore, ceased to interest him. Whatever is spir- 
itually right for him to do best fulfils the purpose of 
his soul, and this soul's rights, he now understands, 
cover the Universe. So to everything that hath 
been made he knows himself the present heir. He 
can take its wholeness to himself and leave it 
whole, undivided, to every one whose sole desire is 
to possess it in its entirety. For this Universe 
is not an abstract wholeness outside himself, which 
is yet to him a world composed of external things to 
be conquered, and thus won by a forceful power. 
He construes it instead as essential friendship, the 
House of opulent Love, the daily Bread, the Intelli- 
gence with which to express himself to his self 
divinely. 



Action 129 

So he will consider himself neither too good for 
the ordinary companionship of Life, nor too evil for 
a constant communion with the angels of Heaven, 
with the Host within the hosts, since he will now 
interpret terms spiritually. The ability to express 
one's inmost thought understandingly to one's self 
sustains and strengthens itself by use, while one is 
convinced of his heavenly completeness. It should 
be remembered, however, that one's thought is not 
strengthened by occasionally substituting for it some 
different interpretation adapted to one's fear in an 
hour of extreme need, although this inner knowl- 
edge has been known not to fail one even then, 
unfaithful though one has been. Happily, when one 
knows surely that this Power irradiates his thought 
and clothes it with the habit of Spirit, his fear of 
dependence vanishes, while in its stead reigns, 
not a sense of independence, but that consciousness 
of the divine interdependence which unites the heirs 
of Heaven on the common plane of Being, by means 
of manifesting the same Power springing from the 
same eternal Source. So one comes to feel the at- 
mosphere of Paul's heavenly words : 

" Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with every spir- 
itual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ : 
even as he chose us in him before the foundation of 
the world, that we should be holy and without 
blemish before him in love." 



ONE AND ANOTHER 



I 

AN unfaltering faith and an exhaustless endurance 
are required by One who is offering himself as an 
aid to Another who is looking upward from the 
humanly circumscribed deeps of some apparent pit 
for a real helper ; for some one who will take his 
hand, and unflinchingly lead him to the safe and 
happy plane of Being. One's will must be sturdy 
enough, his principle must be sufficiently established 
in himself, to rouse Another to the necessary effort 
for freeing himself from that hapless sense of being 
which makes the human periphery a limitation 
which enforces suffering. Both firm and tender 
must be the hand extended, and truly strengthened 
should it be by a heart interest of such magnitude 
that there shall be no shadow cast later by One's 
compromising with the dictates of a fear of conse- 
quences either to the helper, or to the helped. 

One could not help Another in the least if he 
were to permit Another's habitual indecision to 
affect his own government of the work being inten- 
tionally done for Another's good. One would, 
were he thus yielding, be as helpless as Another to 



One and Another 131 

whom he is presumably offering his aid, and it 
might then prove far more difficult to restore One's 
own thought the second time than it was the first. 
No good can be effected by putting One's self in 
the place of the obviously unsupplied needy for the 
purpose of rendering a completer service. Instead, 
One should place Another, whose need is so appar- 
ent, in the Christ-centre of Being by confidently 
assuring Another, both silently and audibly, that 
this Centre is the stronghold of every God-child, and 
that Another is already well-equipped for this place 
— his real place in Life. 

The hand outstretched to aid Another must not 
quiver with fear. The tone must be clear and 
undaunted which bids Another, "Hold fast," when 
to Another the road to the Kingdom of heavenly 
Peace seems long and steep. It may appear to 
Another that he is at the very foot of the Mountain 
of Delight, and that in order to attain its shining 
crest he must scale this mountain in weakness, in 
pain, in despair. It may also appear to Another 
that One to whom he is looking for aid, uncharitably, 
or else in ignorance of his weakness, is not doing all 
that should be done. Moreover, it may seem to 
Another, whose outlook is from the depths of help- 
lessness, that One, whose outlook is from achieve- 
ment, has forgotten how to be kind, has grown cold 
and pharisaic in the midst of an assured ease, and 
entrenched himself in an opinion that he assumes 
to be infallible. 



1^2 The Hidden Treasure 

But nothing of this argument should be permitted 
to affect One who is trying to open the Treasure of 
Life to Another's view, trying to enlighten the view 
of others to a knowledge of this Treasure. And it 
will not, since One will himself understand that he 
must resolutely, until he can do so spontaneously, 
attune his own hearing to that Voice which quickens 
the soul of man to an understanding of the true 
Way ; attune his ear with unswerving fidelity to the 
heavenly Word, that Word which speaks only of 
Deity's Own through the individual, throughout the 
Universal, although apparently unheard except by 
those who desire with constant desire to feel its 
love quickening through themselves. For One must 
carry One's self the whole Way, — that Way which 
shall appear either long or short, according to One's 
own responsiveness, — as One has learned from 
experience. So shall it, perhaps, seem a long way 
to Another who is trying to reach One's hand out- 
stretched from the heavenly plane of Thought; 
trying to be sustained by the strengthening word in 
his ear, spoken as it should be, both silently and 
audibly, with the earnestness of the eternal Spirit 
by One to whom he is looking as Truth's divine 
representative. 

And One who knows that the Soul's infinite 
Treasure of Power is within his own thought looks 
steadfastly upon this Treasure in Another's thought, 
to whom this Way is venturesome, although Another 



One and Another 133 

hopelessly admits that there is no other means by 
which he can possibly gain strength, or even keep 
his life, since all earthly means are failing him. To 
Another One speaks of his Treasure as indescribable 
except in the language of Soul. Yet within the 
Soul, One knows that there is no necessity for 
struggling with the details essential to explaining 
the processes whereby Life is constructed ; and 
knows that the Soul of all created things understands 
itself as Universal Life, increate, the divine influx 
and efflux of every living thing. One also knows 
this Soul's purpose and result to be simultaneously 
expressed. Whoever sees this clearly will not argue 
concerning Life for his own instruction, because he 
will perfectly understand that, if he allows himself a 
willing interest in his soul's real activity, there will 
then be the consciously perfect response to this 
activity throughout his whole being, simply because 
it will be, without a single challenging doubt or ques- 
tion, the whole of Being to him. 

Heaven's handiwork, not being the output of a 
piecework mill, is spontaneous in its manifestation. 
" Let there be Light " is the all-sufficient word, and 
enlightenment is universal. That One knows. For 
Heaven's Will requires no concentrative effort by a 
predetermined purpose to gather itself concretely 
into the Way of its Own appointing, the Way 
through which it already and always radiates itself 
— its Light, its Being, the I AM of all real manifesta- 



i$4 The Hidden Treasure 

tion. This Way has the length of the infinite reach 
of Thought, the breadth of the spiritual Universe — 
and there is none else. The height of Heaven's 
Love, and the depth of this Love, since it encircles 
all Being, is One's only periphery. And this One 
likewise knows. 

So, being spiritually confident, One's hand ex- 
tended to Another is steady for the clasp with the 
Tightness of Soul in Another, even though the depths 
seem so dark as to conceal the Soul's foundation 
from Another, and that darkness so to benumb his 
faculties as to prevent his reconstructing his con- 
sciousness of Life alone ; thus to prevent his resur- 
recting the true sense of his ability, capacity, power, 
strength, joy, gladness unutterable, — so many 
names for the hidden Treasure with their inter- 
changeable meanings, that Treasure which should 
be visible to each, of which all should remind one 
another constantly, and which then would not seem 
only an occasional refracting gleam of Light, some 
illusory ray which causes more dispute than the tan- 
gibility of the sea-serpent. 

Perhaps to Another it seems slow journeying. 
And perhaps it seems easier to most to dally with 
the fears of yesterday and to-morrow than to estab- 
lish a real selfhood from a real viewpoint for the 
everlasting things — which, secure in their Nature, 
engender no fears — of this moment. It seems to 
many impossible not to prefigure some frightful de- 



One and Another 135 

scent into which it is difficult to keep from plunging 
at once ; impossible not to argue with an inward 
dread of some fatal result. So it seems difficult for 
Another to realize that the beautiful Land of Prom- 
ise is already his to possess so soon as he pays the 
price. With reassuring words, One having a quick- 
ened vision repeatedly tells Another that this Prom- 
ised Land is the Field wherein his Life, his Treas- 
ure, only seems hidden from him. One tells 
Another, however, that he must see it for himself, 
see the glorious beauty of his Being for himself, in 
order to know his real Self, although he can never 
take it from this Field to disport it as fancy ; and 
that when he permits his sight to view it, he must 
not be discouraged if others appear not to appreciate 
properly the real value of his possession — if it seem 
still concealed from man. Another must, moreover, 
work diligently to earn its price so that no doubt of 
its possession shall betray his ownership for a single 
instant; become so absorbed in its purchase as to 
have no interest else than getting others to help him 
acquire it consciously ; and trust in it absolutely for 
his own ability whether he be waking or sleeping. So 
One instructs Another that this Treasure can never 
be shown as a personal interest ; that it can never 
be an exclusively personal possession, although it 
will forever be all his own because of his unity 
with the creation ; and that essentially his individual 
interest must ever be in the undivided whole. 



136 The Hidden Treasure 

It is probable that what One at first says to An- 
other, Another's reason will reject. But the words 
will be spoken to his Soul's intelligence, and, because 
of his desire to be spiritually receptive, he will gain a 
clearer and still clearer view as the communion be- 
tween One and Another continues, which it should 
forever do. For One teaches Another that a great 
Light is forever emanating from the Source of All- 
love within this appearance of man, and that One 
sees it shining through Another as through himself. 
This Light One speaks of as being infinite because 
it is the sight, increate, which manifests itself as 
the whole Light through that which it sees ; and 
that, thus seeing, it eternally establishes its Own 
substantial image in what it sees, whereby it ex- 
presses through this manifestation all life, all 
intelligence, all power, with Spirit's Own un- 
changeableness. So the perception of this manifes- 
tation, this creation, becomes the spiritual vision 
which is termed the Universe — all that which hath 
been made. And so this range of vision One names 
Infinite to Another, who asks during his period of 
discipleship for some letter as a means of communi- 
cation with his friends. He is told that he has the 
same Power and the same Being in himself as he 
sees in the confident spirit of the friend seeking to 
inspire him with a divine interest in the true Self, 
and that he should try to possess himself at once of 
the substance of things hoped for by turning his 



One and Another 13J 

thought to the Absolute Power working within him 
as ever-quickening Life, instead of weakly submit- 
ting to a fancied dominion causing pain, dissolution, 
death. 

" But I want to be well,'* is Another's cry. 

" I want to do well/' responds One who guides. 
The " I am " with One declares itself " I do." So 
One does not sit idly, merely created. An enforced 
passivity leads to rebellion. For the angel is not 
Heaven's pawn but Heaven's very image. That 
Thought vvh'ch centres in the Infinite One is being 
carried quickly from Being's centre through Being's 
circumference, although never for an instant sepa- 
rated from Being's centre — a divine radiation of 
Truth's present, only sphere. This Thought con- 
tains no untruth, no indecision, no incertitude. It 
has its perfect environment because it is its own 
environment. 

All this One who stands with hand extended to 
aid those who are seeking the Light on the Way 
must have written in his heart with the Christ- 
blood, as he communes with Another who should 
redeem his will through his Creator's, even redeem- 
ing it to the same spontaneous expression of Life, — 
always without fear because of being always con- 
scious of the full glory of Being. To Another there 
seem many steps, and frequently the day is all 
night, with not, apparently, a ray of light, but with a 
gloom so tangible that the dreadful penalty for back- 



138 The Hidden Treasure 

sliding seems to have spread its pall in anticipation 
of some such event, coming as the vultures are said 
to come just before the event suggested by their 
unholy appetite. The gloom suggests to Another 
that the pit without foundation yawns deep and long 
and wide beneath him, although he, fainting, be- 
lieves the worst is yet to come. One has seen the 
struggling, wrestling, of Another ; he has probably 
passed through a similar experience himself. The 
waters of the Red Sea have seemed to spread them- 
selves with a tumultuous insistence before him as if 
greedy for some too long-coming, delicate soul. 
But these waters had retired, evaporated, or, best 
of all results, been converted into the water of Life, 
and One has seen the firm foundation of that chan- 
nel — man, the divine Temple — through which the 
River of Life flows. Within himself he knows the 
Spirit of Christ walking the wave. So to Another 
he says : 

" Hold fast, my friend ; to this day has the Spirit 
of all Life brought you. Through all the aeons of 
time, through all the many phases of existence, 
that you have regarded as Life rather than to take 
hold of that consciousness of Spirit which should be 
your abiding sense of Life, eternal and unchangeable 
Life, His Love has borne you. You now stand in 
Spirit's safe place, even as you have always stood, 
sustained by its strength, and absolutely free as to 
your manifestation of its Power. Rouse your fac- 



One and Another ijg 

ulties anew ; gather of Spirit's love, and come with 
me. This is for you the hour for co-ordination in 
Spirit. I am here with you to help you, and with 
me are the heavenly legions, each representing to 
you the Spirit of the Host." 

Thus gathered, Another is re-inspired. His 
strength is renewed, and the journey from slum- 
bering faculties to the full consciousness is continued 
with a refreshed purpose. At last Another stands 
consciously beside One who has served him as a 
beacon ; who has worked to save from an appar- 
ent wreckage his health and happiness, — the well- 
being and joy of the true Consciousness. Not that 
One believes that this Consciousness can possibly 
be forever lost to Another. So far has the Treasure 
in the Field been to One a beacon, a stronghold, a 
divine means for overcoming the burden of anxiety, 
and of what would otherwise have proved tedious 
hours of protracted service. One has worked as 
faithfully as though he had had Another's problem 
of Life to solve for him, and it is not for him to 
question the accuracy of Another's solution, the 
thoroughness of his efforts, — whether Another has 
solved what appeared to him the mystery concern- 
ing the unity of Soul with Body, or has left the 
matter contented with a modified relationship be- 
tween dual points of being, — a mere self-satisfaction 
which may later shadow forth the same uncon- 
ceived, inconceivable, pit. But while the call was in 



140 The Hidden Treasure 

One's ear, One could not turn from it, or yield to 
a sense of much-needed rest for himself, that rest 
which would seem so necessary in order to meet the 
exigency of the stern demands upon him. 

The Treasure which opens itself to One by the 
work done in the Light of the eternal Day can never 
be presented as a crux for irreverent or useless dis- 
cussion. But has he found his work easy? Sad, 
indeed, must be the result of digging pitfalls for the 
unwary feet of men. If the sins of omission labor 
along parallel lines with the sins of commission, One 
may well doubt if there is any other way so easy as 
the one of service through which he passes, expend- 
ing in this service the hidden Treasure of his Field, 
the Field which he has once bought with the price 
of suffering, and which he must again buy with his 
gladness ; his Eden which once seemed so fearfully 
guarded by both sword and fire. For when Another 
with whom One has worked with spiritual ardor, yet, 
apparently, so arduously, stands beside him on the 
level plane of Being, he cannot say, " I have finished 
my task, and so can yield to a weariness which 
overpowers, and, therefore, devitalizes me." One 
has learned from his work with Another, work 
which will doubtless name itself experience, and 
One must now work steadfastly on, continuing to 
apply the Power within him, and with the happy 
Knowledge that this Power is his very Life. Is this 
easy ? Well, is there any other way ? Can you 
show me a better way? 



One and Another 141 

Within himself, One knows that there is but 
One. There has never been Another ; there will 
never be any interest other than his own. For 
within himself is treasured the same Being that 
occupies all. 



II 

ONE willingly heeds the sorrowful appeal of 
Another while he thinks that his companionship 
of work is effective for good results ; but when One 
notes only a selfish indulgence in grief by the indi- 
vidual whose claim upon him would otherwise be 
great, he also notes the unadvisedness of proceeding 
further until the individual himself is really ready 
for One's office. In some hour of bereavement 
and trouble perhaps it may seem to Another that his 
personal suffering is greater than others have suf- 
fered ; that he is passing through straits of grief and 
denial unknown to others, although it may be said 
of him that he is not denying himself the luxury of 
selfishness on account of his own great love for 
others. Instead, he lies supinely before that which, 
if he were to open his thought to receive it as his 
natural right, would exempt him — or rather render 
him immune — from sadness and pain always. 
Sometimes One says to Another thus grieving, 
"Arouse your will ; take hold of your true Nature. 
Be one in your Christ-nature with God." This 



142 The Hidden Treasure 

seems the simplest way of instructing Another to a 
more intelligent knowledge of what he can really 
be. But, alas, often comes the answer from Cant, 
"One should be obedient to the Will of God. If it 
is His Will that I should suffer, then I must suffer ; 
then I must submit. I must resign myself to His 
Will." Yet this same individual is ready to lay his 
burdens on the will of any one who will assume 
such a load, upon whom, he will explain, he has 
righteous claims, while, by such claims, he is 
further depriving himself consciously of the good-will 
of divinity. But this mental attitude he excuses by 
professing that. h£ would not thus arrogantly assert 
his own will against receiving what the Father has 
in store for him, while sadly unconscious of the 
arrogance and conceit of such professed humility. 

To many, such assertions will have the ring of 
real piety. Moreover, of some it may be truly said 
that they willingly suffer because they sincerely 
believe the Will of God to be thus manifesting itself 
in some way unknown to them through their suffer- 
ing. About such a mental condition, there is a 
piteous sweetness and resignation to One who 
apprehends Life from the consciousness of man's 
real possession of Power ; a pity that he has to 
overcome quickly so as not to add to the suffering 
of Another for whom One is therefore permitted to 
do but little, because of Another's accepting his 
human view of life as the divine viewpoint, although 



One and Another 143 

probably never reasoning with himself concerning 
the severity of his deity's justice, or concerning this 
deity's obvious impotency. 

One can then only note that Another appears ob- 
livious of his natural imagery, appears to have for- 
gotten that in the Beginning he was created in the 
image and likeness of this infinite Will, which in him 
seems to lose its absoluteness while he is viewing a 
progressive form of being, and which to him can, 
therefore, be nothing more than a vagarious human 
will. So One notes that Another does not appear 
to know that within his true Soul it is now his happy 
privilege to image Heaven, or that the appearance 
which seems to stand in his way contradicting the 
Will of God will continue to appear until he seeks 
to realize the Will of God by enacting it with all the 
strength of its known Power. For the condition 
that he enforces to prevent his exercise of the true 
Power is caused by his reversion of the Rule of 
Being to himself, while arguing that the Almighty 
Will is the image of human will-power. Assuredly, 
no one can know the Will of Heaven without first 
trying to manifest it, and that one cannot do until he 
turns to it for an intelligent strength, and, more- 
over, with the earnest purpose of adding himself to 
the heavenly sense of others, instead of to their 
obvious unwisdom — foolishness. But this is to be 
done with a glad, untiring willingness. Then one 
will comprehend that whatever is expressed will- 



144 The Hidden Treasure 

ingly is also expressed gladly, and, with this awak- 
ening, he comes into the understanding of the ever- 
rejoicing Mind, of which he himself is the perfect 
image and likeness whenever he manifests it fully 
to himself, and so without any personal reserva- 
tions. 

Now Mind without expression would be self- 
effaced. The infinite Light of Heaven would go out 
in darkness. There would be no place for Power if 
there were nothing to fill the place. Man, who pro- 
fessedly glories in being the Temple of the Living 
Mind, would be as negative as the mirror from 
which he sometimes believes himself reflected, but 
which receives no lasting impression of his pres- 
ence. That which had believed itself so much as 
an appearance at least would be effaced — would 
have never been, as there would be no mind to 
chronicle either its appearance or its disappearance. 
There could then have been nothing to annihilate. 
So the thought that man suppresses because of his 
submission to his deity, as he believes, can never 
prove a safe guide to his spiritual expression — 
manifestation. Instead it will unhappily seem the 
guide to that which evokes misery and consequent 
despair, so proving a very demon in its creativeness, 
whereas the true Mind is the glad Soul always. For 
its effusion is spontaneous, and it neither erects bar- 
riers, nor fancies that aught else can erect them so 
as to prevent its Own perfect expression. 



One and Another 145 

The individual who accepts suffering for his hap- 
less portion is usually sure that none other can suf- 
fer as much as he does, unless it be some sad object 
of his earthly affection. In this respect there has 
been no niggardly dispensation from Heaven — if 
one believes that he is receiving such a portion as 
the distinctive regard of . Heaven. Nevertheless, 
they are few indeed who, although professing to 
have been thus regarded by Him Who knows no 
variableness, neither shadow that is cast by turn- 
ing, do not turn to every source available as a pos- 
sible remedial agency. But the healing grace, mis- 
apprehended, of course fails to come in its blessed 
fulness. It is the apparently substituted mind 
which, offering itself as the regulator of a man's life, 
diverts the attention of man from his true expres- 
sion, and so proves the obstacle by causing a man 
to believe that whatever comes to him, whether de- 
sirable or not, must surely come directed by the 
personally attentive Will of the Creator. By such 
a mode of reasoning, the true statement of Life ap- 
pears perverted as to its essential meaning ; for one 
should know absolutely that whatever comes to one 
surely comes from Heaven, and is therefore for his 
present happiness. 

Moreover, such jugglery between profession and 
fear makes one appear to be willingly occupying a 
false position ; of being a wilful falsifier respecting 
his religious standpoint. Yet it should be conceded 



146 The Hidden Treasure 

that the individual who probably believes — and 
probably believes that he sincerely believes — that 
to be his spiritual doctrine rarely sees himself from 
this analytical viewpoint. He may be a devoted 
religionist, but totally devoid of any spiritual atmos- 
phere for others, simply because he is obviously 
without anything which could possibly pass for 
spiritual discernment, for divine conviction, although 
he may use a formula of religious belief slightly in 
advance of the mere pietist's. 

It is often asserted that one is afraid to use his 
own judgment. Perhaps his personal modesty de- 
clines thus to arrogate the heavenly Power to him- 
self, for not yet has it come to him always to know 
his own ability to construe judgment as the heav- 
enly Wisdom, of which he is even now divinely the 
image — an imagery which even now should be all- 
pervasive in his consciousness. It is commonly 
believed that human faults must first be scored be- 
fore one is worthy to view himself divinely. This 
scoring will, indeed, seem a fearful arraigning to the 
best of humanity. The darkness of some fancied 
pit fills one's imagination ; the Light of Heaven is 
then forgotten, and man does not then seem to know 
that it is his mental absence from Almighty Love 
which causes all his trouble ; trouble that he himself 
could dissipate were he only to turn his thought to 
the Being increate, and so unchangeable, within 
himself. 



One and Another 147 

It does, indeed, seem a long while between the 
beginning and ending of that judgment which is con- 
strued as condemnation ; for while one is reviewing 
his faults, even if but to deplore them, they have a 
horrible, a terrible, fascination for him, seeming to 
hold his gaze spellbound. One then seems helpless, 
bound to inertia, while dream-things hold full sway 
as they weave pictures upon the self-imposed screen 
between him and his real Soul. One is reminded 
of Milton's Satan, that arch-conjuror sitting, during 
Eve's troubled dream, " squat like a toad " close to 
her ear, to be thus found by his legions. To say 
that this is self-delusion is to account for it, and 
thereby to admit a power which was never Heaven- 
ordained. It is a tenet of the Christian profession 
that one should always hear the Voice carrying only 
the true Word ; that one should always feel the 
Spirit of Christ in every one. Those who are sick, 
in prison, sinners wherever and however they may 
appear, in them all is one to behold the Christ ; to 
love and be attentive to the heavenly Guest in 
each. Hence, not one thus professing can success- 
fully justify himself for defective spiritual sight by 
any form of excuse. Nor does the only Nature of 
man need, or know anything of, justification. To 
turn to the heavenly Heart is to feel Heaven's 
all-absorbing Love ; nor should one turn unconscious 
himself of carrying this Love. To be unconscious of 
its Presence as vital Good in one's life to-day — to 



148 The Hidden Treasure 

be heedless of it — should sufficiently account for 
any suffering. To attribute the suffering resulting 
from one's inattention to its Voice — to its Will — 
sufficiently accounts for every obvious misfortune 
so soon as one views the things of Life by the Light 
shining on his Way. 

Ill 

THE work attempted by One for Another should 
always be done from the spiritual centre of One's 
being. The real atmosphere of Life should be felt 
glowing with the living Light within the soul of him 
who is trying to quicken others to the true percep- 
tion of Heaven's present inspiration ; otherwise the 
worker will miss the blessing himself. Through his 
whole being should be felt the strong, though gentle, 
radiation of that flaming Essence which should also 
be interpreted as the increate, conserving Centre of 
all that which hath been made. The Light there- 
from must be sufficient to illumine his own way so 
that therein shall be found no darkness at all. This 
Light should be to him the Power irradiating his en- 
vironment ; be to him father, mother, lover, friend. 
Its essential meaning should so occupy his thought, 
despite every contradictory appearance, that he 
shall know himself its living Sign, heir to its Pres- 
ence from being its Spirit-sustained instrument ; 
from being the heavenly channel through which its 
Power enacts the works of Universal Will. 



One and Another 149 

Hence he should not lose his active consciousness 
of its present work through him as Universal Will 
by a form of meditation which will betray him by 
leaving him negative as to resolution, indefinite as 
to purpose ; for then such failure of active expres- 
sion will tend to a slumbering and dreaming which 
will, while it lasts, be to him a sense of dual exist- 
ence, from which he would so gladly be aroused — 
a duality which is apparently causing him as much 
suffering as if he had no knowledge of the working 
of absolute Truth, and so no knowledge of how im- 
mune he ought to be from such temptation. Medi- 
tation, without putting the thought-power into effect 
rightly, is sure to become a merely speculative 
interest in divine affairs, even when one feels sure 
that this will not prove his mental procedure, and 
that he can easily continue that sort of dreaming and, 
meanwhile, concentrate his thought upon its spirit- 
ual direction. But one falls far short of success if 
one fail to regard the cost of spiritual building. He 
who works with an earnest purpose soon learns that 
this building covers the thought area of a full Mind ; 
and so that this thought can withdraw itself from 
nothing living with the intention of devoting itself 
more particularly to other signs of Life without an 
apparent depletion of his own mentality. Accord- 
ingly, one should contemplate Love from the heav- 
enly Source of Knowledge without limiting himself 
to a partial view, since the Whole requires that spir- 



i^o The Hidden Treasure 

itual discernment which absorbs one, soul and body, 
for the righting of one's perspective by his whole 
attention to it, — which, therefore, should be done 
with a bright cheerfulness instead of with the spirit 
of asceticism. 

So one is to devote himself fully, and with an un- 
tiring interest, to his subject ; to that which he has 
hitherto probably regarded as duty-deeds ; and so 
to this interest he is to give, instead of the allied 
fancies of the World of Appearances, the unity of 
all Thought ; that which is always gathered because 
of its spiritual concreteness, and which is thus rep- 
resentative of the divine Life — Intelligence — as 
the concrete Will, the absolute Soul of everything 
springing from Deity. To wait for a season of med- 
itation to clear the mists from one's spiritual sight 
is to imply a presupposition of unreadiness, of doubt, 
resulting from periodic inactivity. For while one's 
thought is consciously availing itself of its inherent 
power for the purpose of uniting itself with all in the 
divine association of ideas and interests, this inherent 
Power is revealing itself to him as the inexhaustible 
Treasure upon which one can constantly rely with- 
out any fear of impoverishing it ; upon which one 
should always be drawing consciously, even if one's 
need is nothing more than a newness of thought for 
the giving of thanks to one's Blessed Consciousness 
for being thus blessed. 

Many have doubtless learned from unhappy ex- 



One and Another 151 

periences that the moment one stops his active 
manifestation of thought, even if with the sole 
purpose of meditating upon its quality as Spirit, it 
becomes to him a debatable subject which he had 
better avoid, or, best of all, have no desire to 
analyze. For whenever anyone attempts to analyze 
Spirit, to do anything except be conscious of its 
present wholeness and power in himself, he is aware 
of appearing detached, of appearing set aside, from 
its communion. Then Life immediately loses the 
beauty of its permanence for him, his vision becomes 
distorted, and he proceeds to mirror himself in his 
objective world as a creature incomplete and frail, 
and, therefore, corruptible. 

But One who sustains his thought by resolutely 
keeping it a waking delight, as he mentally views, 
from the Mount of Transfiguration, the glory of 
Heaven revealing itself,— even through those who 
profess to have only partially alive faculties, and to 
feel the hurt of an impeded circulation, solely 
because some portion of the thought-system appears 
closed, thus to be rejecting the ingress of Universal 
Power by failing to use it consciously, — is carried 
by his point of view through the World Indescriba- 
ble, his vision holding for him the full measure of 
things — past, present, and to come. So the 
"Mount of Panoramic Vision " is transfigured by 
the Soul-light into the present Substance of the 
Eternal, and the power of it, and the glory of it, are 



1^2 The Hidden Treasure 

to be found within himself ; and found for him to 
express through the singleness of the Universal Soul 
as Heaven's blessed bounteousness for each and so 
for all. 

"Thy will be done here and now " is the word- 
ing of one's sole desire as One now opens his 
thought-channels to the current of Life All-divine, 
and knows within himself that his own oneness with 
Truth Absolute opens the Way of Truth to his 
friends also. In the gladness of the moment, the 
Holy Light becomes to him the shining raiment 
clothing his thought for others, yet leaving it 
unclothed in that it conceals no personal estimate of 
himself from Another who would have the same 
Light for his wedding-garment, as he also unites his 
soul with the Absolute. 

In One's soul's silence he will hear the Word 
which forever animates his being. " Bear Thou me, 
and bear Thou with me," is no longer a petition 
which provokes the individual to discussion, — as it 
did formerly whenever One tried to solve the rela- 
tionship between himself and Heaven. Abiding 
within the shadow of the Almighty thus has a new 
meaning as One views Life from the forever-lighted 
plane of Being. To nestle within the feathers of 
that Love which moves quicker than a bird's flight 
through the air is, happily for him, a tenderly 
demonstrable fact. The pinions of heavenly Power 
will safely carry One who trusts absolutely in Spirit 



One and Another 153 

from the established Centre of Being to the outer- 
most ends of the earth, while at these earth-ends 
shall be found the same central Power ; shall be 
found that Presence which is surely felt by One 
who has no other place for concealment than with 
Christ in God. 

The earthly child walks with confidence in the 
parent's sustaining hand. It has the fear of depend- 
ence, however, for it may be left some adverse 
moment alone ; but the child of Heaven is never 
alone, although it may appear to have concealed its 
Father in its fancies ; to have its Treasure unknown, 
even unknowable, by preference. Not even de- 
pendent on the Will of Heaven does the Father 
leave his children. For the same Will reveals itself 
through Heaven's imagery as the Christ-will. 

" Let us, then, labor for an inward stillness, 
An inward stillness and an inward healing, 
That perfect silence where the lips and heart 
Are still, and we no longer entertain 
Our own imperfect thoughts and vain opinions." 

That cogency of Heaven which seems to be carry- 
ing a man in his ignorance to some untoward, 
unsought destiny is but man's misinterpretation of 
the Divine Will governing him thus harshly. For 
Heaven's Will, One should be sure, bears no resem- 
blance to the human will with its disintegrating 
policy, but should instead be regarded as man's 



154 The Hidden Treasure 

spontaneous fulfilment of the divine within himself, 
and precisely as divine within all others. But in no 
likeness is the image of Heaven to be anthropomor- 
phically viewed if One is truly desirous of responding 
fully to Spirit's call — to that which is Absolute 
Understanding. 



YOU 

YOU ! oh, wonderful you ! You who speculate 
whence came you, whither go you ! Whose inter- 
est is greater in yourself than in aught else ! And 
well you may be interested, for is not your Self the 
Ark of the Holy Spirit wherein is enshrined, and 
has been from the Beginning, and will be forever 
and ever, the Absolute One? But you should not 
to yourself resemble the ark of tradition which 
Uzzah had in his fancy, this fancy causing him to 
forget the security of the real Ark, and to believe 
that a feeble human hand could prevent its going to 
pieces when cattle stumbled ; causing him to believe 
that God's Word could be shaken from its founda- 
tion by the weaknesses of men ; and causing him — 
Uzzah — to die of this belief. Nevertheless, all your 
petty conceits regarding yourself are of pigmy pro- 
portions compared with what should be your infinite 
regard, your infinite respect, for the only Selfhood 
you have — the real essence and substance of your 
Life. Slight is the call to be astonished at your first 
wonderment regarding your Nature whenever this 
knowledge once quickens you. But you are beau- 
tiful instead of wonderful, as you are sure to know 
whenever you base your life constantly on the sim- 



1 56 The Hidden Treasure 

pie Wisdom of Truth. If you would only act rather 
than speculate ; if you would only put your thought 
serenely into devout action, rather than to believe 
it too weak to be effective as an absolute expression 
of Life yet able to endure ages of suffering, how 
soon would your thought clarify itself of all dross ? 

Happy you so soon as you fully realize the glory of 
your Nature, of your Universal Nature ; when you 
can look upon an earthworm and see its thought, 
instead of grovelling in darkness, transfigured in the 
Light, and so shining with the radiance of the an- 
gelic consciousness ; when you can look upon some- 
thing that you have previously regarded as a pest 
and see the all-pureness of the Holy One glowing 
through it, and thus see it transformed in its desire 
to express divinity. Your heretofore false estimates 
of Life will then be no more real to you than Plato 
intended that the passing shadows reflected on a 
screen in his Socratic figure should be to others. 

You have probably believed that you were being 
sorely punished for your committed sins by some 
deific or demonic power, and so were unaware that 
you were being self-punished, and thus punished 
by your self-repression. You may have looked upon 
others with an unconscious self-condemnation when 
you judged them harshly. You have perhaps be- 
lieved that their wrongdoing had resulted in bitter 
sorrow for them, and perhaps you have said that 
because of such wrongdoing God had taken some 



You 757 

dear one from them to Himself, without apparently 
realizing yourself that, were this so, it should be 
remarked as a blessing instead of as a curse. With 
an instinctive devotion, instead of with a spiritual 
perception, you have prayed to the God of hosts, 
and have continued to pray, lest some greater evil 
befall you, even when no answer came that you could 
construe as favorable to your present interest. In 
this respect your mental attitude does not greatly 
differ from that of Caru-datta, as expressed to his 
friend Maitreya who was trying to cheer him when 
troubles besieged him ; for Caru-datta, responding 
to Maitreya's friendly efforts, in a happier moment, 
begged Maitreya to carry an oblation to the gods for 
him. But Maitreya demurred, saying, " Why, 
what's the use, when the gods you have worshipped 
have done nothing for you ?" The argument con- 
cerning man's relationship to God, or gods, has 
changed but little, you will note, during the ages 
which have intervened since this the oldest of 
Sanscrit poems was written ; for Caru-datta replied : 

" Friend, speak not thus, for worship is the duty 
Of every family ; the gods are honored 
By offerings, and gratified by acts 
Of penance and restraint in thought and word. 
Therefore, delay not to present the oblation." 

You may have perhaps only faintly discerned that 
it is action instead of restraint which is spiritually 



1 58 The Hidden Treasure 

effective in your life, but you have still much to 
learn — with the rest of us — from spiritual experi- 
ence, which will sometimes seem to you an educa- 
tive process rather than an immediate conversion to 
Truth from untruth. Yet you will probably reluc- 
tantly admit to yourself that this slowness of com- 
prehension is due solely to your negligence in keeping 
your thought always gathered to its true expression. 
Perhaps you deem it far easier to let it slumber occa- 
sionally than to know always, whether waking or 
sleeping, that Spirit has full possession of you. You 
sometimes, and perhaps often, indulge in an inner 
complaining, not because you do not know any bet- 
ter after a little enlightening, but because you find 
it easier to let old habits govern you than to renew 
the spiritual habit of your perfect beginning by 
knowing only the absolute Truth of your Being. 
For you should never voice the spirit of unrest, or a 
fear of anything, to another ; neither should you 
ever voice it to yourself, nor should you willingly 
appear weak or troubled to another. You should not 
invite sympathy for weakness, but rather should 
you invite others to a knowledge of your power and 
freedom that they may know their own. You 
should think of your eternal Life instead of viewing 
things temporally, although you should spiritually 
attend to everything perceptible to you. You should 
see, instead of weakness and corruption, the strength 
and permanence of everything, and this you can 



You 159 

do only by seeing yourself with your spiritual vision 
always. Whenever you have believed it easier for 
others to do a great work — it may appear only a 
small one, according to the energy that you yourself 
manifest- — than for you, you have thus believed 
because you were ignorant of the fact that every 
effort made by others is a draft also upon your 
strength and vitality, and because you were also 
ignorant that the draft will be the more subtly "de- 
pleting in proportion as your indolence turns to 
resistence. You have not perhaps known that there 
is the same exhausting demand upon you from what 
appears as a will-not temper which keeps you in 
bed, or which keeps you plodding round a small 
area, as there is from the human will-power required 
for a larger work while one is unconscious of one's 
natural Power. But there is a better knowledge to 
have : If one calls upon the heavenly Power by 
using it for the purpose of producing a divine result 
in the midst of every-day things, one will surely 
know that the Power which enters into the smallest 
appearing thing is that heavenly Power which 
works in the greatest appearing thing. Emerson 
wrote truly, 

" There is no great and no small 
To the Soul that maketh all ; 
And where it cometh all things are, 
And it cometh everywhere." 



160 The Hidden Treasure 

But you need to think, and to think truly ; for 
how few they seem who think at all, even when 
they claim to be logical thinkers. 

" Though man a thinking being is defined, 
Few use the grand prerogative of mind. 
How few think justly of the thinking few ! 
How many never think, who think they do ! " 

You should never permit a jealous note to mar the 
harmony of your thought. You should never envy 
any one anything at all, nor will you whenever you 
truly know that all Heaven is yours, and that there 
is nothing more to have ; that what you truly have 
belongs to every one, precisely as what they have 
really belongs to you ; and that each can gladly 
take possession of the other so soon as the unmoral- 
ity of each is effaced by spiritual Knowledge, and 
each wakens from the need of the Ten Command- 
ments with their suggestiveness. You should never 
victimize yourself with a self-conscious personal 
pride, for while you are regarding yourself pridefully 
you are trying to separate yourself from others, 
when, instead, you should be consciously trying to 
unify yourself with all. Spiritual snobbishness is 
impossible, and the human kind is the veriest van- 
ity — untruthful, and, so, unmoral. Certainly there 
can be no pride resulting from spiritual achievement 
since the hosts of Heaven are working all together 
in our good service, and so to consider one's self 



You 161 

personally in this service must necessarily bring a 
great wave of shame, when one knows better than 
to do so, although of neither pride nor shame will 
Spirit know anything; so the wise individual can 
only want to feel that which Spirit is feeling within 
one. But you do not probably allow yourself to 
feel anything but Truth's love within you, and so 
you do not lend yourself to irritability, to vengeful- 
ness, to petty spite of any sort. Instead, you touch 
the Spirit of Christ within you, and are conscious of 
being instantly renewed in the simpleness of spiritual 
Being. And when you are working with another 
for his renewal, if any of these qualities appear to 
write themselves as his human nature, you try, 
both silently and audibly, to quicken him to his 
natural sense of Being. So you gather him as you 
would a petulant, unquiet, unruly child, and try to 
inspirit his thought to the fact that he is being car- 
ried in the loving bosom of the Christ. You can 
then see in such an individual only the Christ-child, 
just as you should see this heavenly Child in every 
one. You will then confidently see that all that 
which your sight gathers into its perspective is 
begotten only of God. So shall you help every 
individual to come into the sound, whole sense 
of Life. 



1 62 The Hidden Treasure 



I 



HAVE you any desire to exchange your individual 
sense of life for another's? Has any one, do you 
believe ? Perhaps you would like some personal 
characteristic or belonging of another to add to your 
own. Doubtless there are many things in your 
mode of thinking that you would preferably efface, 
so that they should not shadow your life hereafter. 
And doubtless there are many propensities to which 
you would like to say, " Get thee hence, Satan ; " 
and note their discriminating obedience to your 
edict ; but, perhaps, they seem without the power 
of locomotion to carry themselves away, although 
possessed of sufficient will to adhere to you ; to stand 
in the way of your recovery ; to reproach you ; to 
prevent your self-respect. They are obviously 
your shadow, reflect something of your point of 
view, and, consequently, are not to be thus sum- 
marily dismissed. 

But despite such objectionable adherents, you 
would not be another, get out of your skin into 
another's, and into his temper, so to speak, for any 
of the qualities or belongings wherewith he appears 
personally endowed, although you would like to call 
a few of them your own. Perhaps it will seem to 
you, particularly if you have not worked for similar 
attainments as his yourself, or have not so much as 
recognized your natural endowment, that it is much 



You 163 

easier for another to accomplish tasks — they would 
be tasks to you, you admit — than for yourself. 
Probably you aver that he has a clearer head than 
you ; that things come naturally to him and not to 
you ; or that he has been helped as you have not, 
and are not likely to be. And you have probably 
accounted for the apparent lack of resource in your- 
self by some such line of reasoning when comparing 
yourself with another who has especially distin- 
guished himself, but whose capacity you would not 
for an instant admit superior to your own, while you 
possibly regard yourself as amply competent to give 
him some advice whereby he might better his con- 
dition were he to follow it ; yet with all that he has 
achieved, and with your better knowledge of how 
much you could improve his circumstances were you 
he, you would not exchange your self for his self. 

Perhaps you have believed that duty has pre- 
vented distinction for you, that yours has been a 
treadmill way, and that you have not had the time 
for improvement that you should have had. Per- 
haps you have been grinding along — been to your- 
self just a human mill — frequently or infrequently 
seeking diversion for the sake of the rest which prob- 
ably failed you, believing, meanwhile, that you had 
no time for prayers, except, perhaps, on Sundays and 
certain other occasions, when you did not lose your 
human sense of selfhood long enough to appreciate 
your divine; and so neither the Treasure, nor the 



164 The Hidden Treasure 

Field for its hiding-place, had any meaning to you. 
If you thought about it at all, you possibly inferred 
that once a very good mah, who probably was, as 
he said, the veritable Son of God, taught, concerning 
Heaven, in a mystical manner, the people who 
massed to hear him ; taught them in such an 
involved manner that it would be impossible for 
anyone to-day to solve his meaning, and so it would 
be useless for you to give your entire attention to 
the solution of his parables. Why anyone should 
seek to hide Truth, since it is already so success- 
fully concealed is probably quite as much of a puzzle 
to you as why, after having discovered it, one should 
want to buy a field himself to hide it in. 

You perhaps deprecatingly affirm that there are 
many questions concerning Life with which you 
have neither the time nor the knowledge to deal. 
How is one to leave the mill long enough for such 
discussion without depriving himself, and perhaps 
others, of the necessaries, or comforts, of life? Yet 
you say that you believe in the New Testament 
teaching, and you would probably spurn another 
who assumes that you do not believe as you say, 
and you might also spurn him if he does not profess 
to believe as you say you do concerning spiritual 
matters. But instead of merely spurning him, you 
will probably scorn him as a poor sort of fanatic if 
he asserts that were you really to believe as you 
say you do it would naturally come to pass that the 



You 165 

necessary things of life would be abundantly yours. 
For he would probably also assert that if you 
believed, really and truly believed, in this teaching, 
you would then gladly take the time to pray, and 
the time to care for the supply which would quickly 
come in answer to your prayer, since, according to 
this teaching, if you ask and believe that you receive 
the good is granted you. According to Jesus Christ, 
one's response is required, as well as one's request, 
to make one's prayer divine. And as we thus pray, 
we learn that there is this trinity in prayer : there 
are the request, the response, and the rejoicing 
heart. Have you not time for this manner of 
prayer? Know, then, that time is not needed. Only 
the faithfully conscious heart is required. And by 
faithfully is meant trustfully ; for the trustful thought 
applies itself from the fulness of Heaven's gift to the 
work in hand. Ah, the Prayers of man ! for how 
much suffering they appear accountable ! 

If you are faithful, then it is not suggested to you 
from some fabulous burden to offer as an excuse for 
the poverty of your office in Life that you have no 
time for the regaining of your health and happiness ; 
no time for the realization of your heavenly Nature. 
Still, it does not comfort you any to be told that the 
Father supplies the present needs of man with every 
essential thing, and that he supplies it also before 
any need makes itself felt through suffering, while 
you believe that you cannot appreciate such an in- 



1 66 The Hidden Treasure 

terpretation of the heavenly Nature, and while the 
needs of a barren land, full of tormenting diseases, 
of rigorous poverty, is a paramount belief with you. 
For exactly what you think that you do see will 
surely be the thoughts that you keep in mind to see. 
This, however, you have not understood, — and you 
may regard such a statement as too visionary a 
view of life for your consideration, — that the things 
of your world, of what obtains with you as a world, 
begin within your mentality, instead of outside as a 
detached exterior with which you are to acquaint 
yourself by means of some comparative form of 
measurement applied to its external issues. 

You perhaps occasionally reflect that, during a 
day of youthful conversion, you found Life radiant. 
You then saw things through an aureole for a little 
while, and were carried by your heart's delight. 
Since then you have wanted others to believe that 
you were still conscious of the same radiance, and 
you would not have your fellows suspect that you 
often wonder — that is, whenever you remember 
your early experience — if you were not the mere 
sport of some atmosphere — some religious atmos- 
phere — which was then hypnotizing you. 



II 

YOU are aware that your thought lacks concre- 
tion — you probably say that you are lacking in 
concentrative power. So you find it difficult to 



You i6y 

gather your thought to its spiritual quest, to gather 
it to the effort of knowing that the grace of Heaven 
is breathing its warm, quickening Breath through 
what you call yourself. Perhaps you have the care 
of earthly riches, and multiplied riches are as pro- 
ductive of anxiety as poverty is, since the extremes 
of qualities have a way of producing the same human 
result. Although these riches may gratify you with 
the means for an ostentatious display of possessions, 
as well as enable you to help others in a kindly way, 
yet you have envied many a poor man whose ambi- 
tions do not keep him on the rack. Nevertheless, 
you would not exchange places with him for the 
sake of having his peace. 

Perhaps ill-health offers a reasonable excuse, and 
serves as a cover for your unrest, for your evident 
dissatisfaction with life. That you are very miserable 
you often inwardly concede. You say to yourself 
that there is a preponderance on the wrong side of 
life — that nothing you could buy or sell would in 
the least relieve you. You do not believe that your 
trust in Heaven is sufficiently alive for you to step 
forth into Life a free child of God. As yet you 
cannot understandingly say, " Give me neither 
poverty nor riches. " And as yet you cannot hon- 
estly say that you ask for nothing but Truth. 
But if you could honestly say so, you do com- 
prehend that you would gladly sh®w what is in 
your heart to every one. For you would not 



1 68 The Hidden Treasure 

then feel that there were reservations with which 
you would not willingly part, which you know 
are not good for you to maintain — as their cost 
of maintenance exhausts you spiritually — some of 
them relating to habits, and other of these reser- 
vations relating to doubtful experiences, doubtful 
because you fear that they do not advance your 
spiritual interest, even though they are respectable 
enough from a conventional point of view. 

You are perhaps conscious of being unjust to your- 
self because you appear to support doctrines with 
which you do not fully agree ; you would probably 
say that you have proved their futility. But you 
are not sure that the newer letter, to which you are 
rather more inclined, would serve you any better. 
Of course this newer letter has offered itself to you 
as being spiritually authorized to speak with the 
true Voice, but it has not served you as completely 
as you believe that Absolute Truth should. Never- 
theless, from your reasoning, and from your unsuc- 
cessful attempts to occupy two points of view at the 
same time, it must be evident to you, at least occa- 
sionally, that you are not dealing honestly by your- 
self, and you should be logical enough — reason 
requires logic for its support, as you doubtless 
know — to comprehend that Truth is not negotiating 
for either your soul or your body. Your trouble, 
however, arises from your not having entertained 
the absolutely true proposition of Life steadfastly 



You 169 

enough for you to get at the real gist of things. 
Moreover, Truth has you any way, so, if it could 
ever know anxiety, it would not have to lose its 
sense of Truth on your account. But it is so wholly 
absorbed with its own premise and conclusion as the 
Divine Unit that it is, in this respect, something 
like a self-absorbed person : it does not know that 
there is any opinion of Mind other than its Own. 
Furthermore, it is its Own law and gospel both. It 
never has changed its Mind, and you may be sure 
that there is not the slightest likelihood of its ever 
doing so. And thus have you probably reasoned to 
yourself. 

Truth walks in the wilderness with Christ, and 
though evil sometimes appears as a presupposition 
of some personal power, Truth knows nothing of 
this apparent condition of government, is conscious 
only of its freedom, yet unconscious of itself as 
Power, since its absoluteness is its natural expres- 
sion of the increate Whole. You have doubtless 
told yourself in terms of the same meaning that its 
strength abides in you to use as freely as you will 
— to use as you should ; that it does not ask you to 
waste yourself vaingloriously in its service ; that 
it has never exacted of you any sacrifice of life, or 
health, or happiness ; and that it has never exacted 
of you the sacrifice of your notions to its profundity, 
or of your profundity to its simpleness ; for it has 
never suspected you of having a single notion to 



iyo The Hidden Treasure 

contradict its Wisdom, or of being profound in your 
worldly knowledge. For Truth, you admit, is en- 
tirely devoid of suspicion, of jealousy, of envy, of 
any mean quality, and so it has never once seen a 
mean quality in you. But, perhaps, you have not 
thought intelligently enough about it to know that 
it sees only itself in you, which is all there is in you 
for it to see. 

It is important, however, for you to know that Truth 
sees its Own abundance in you ; that it sees its abun- 
dance in whatever you may be pleased to call that 
which is absolutely necessary to your momentary 
comfort ; and that it is always that which helps you 
to be of infinite use in Life. Still, you may have 
believed that there is truth in the human lie, and 
you may have considered it wiser not to tell the 
whole truth sometimes. Whenever you have 
thought of Truth perhaps you have not regarded it 
seriously enough to credit it with being the selfsame 
Truth occupying every one. You probably have not 
reflected that if you were really to occupy Truth's 
understanding in another, think his Thought — the 
only Thought given to man — live with his Being, 
love with his Lqve, that you would thus be living 
your own perfect individuality ; and that if you 
were both conscious of Truth in its infinitude, you 
would always be telling him the whole Truth whether 
you opened your lips to explain things to him or not. 
Indeed, you would not then need to instruct him in 
the least as to what Truth really is. 



You tyi 

You have not really known that you should each 
see with the same perfect sight, hear with the same 
intelligent hearing, feel with the same uniting love, 
and that the real selfhood of each should, therefore, 
be to each the perfect selfhood of all, and so for each 
and all the divine comprehension of Life, — a knowl- 
edge which would quicken in you that joy so all- 
inclusive of everlasting happiness that you would 
then desire its fulness with all that you conceive of 
desire, and never want to stop radiating it. A narrow 
field wherein to exercise one's thought, do you say? 
No, conversely, this is the Field wherein the pre- 
cious Treasure appears to be buried, although it is 
the only thing in earth and heaven which is truly 
revealing itself as one's present possession — as that 
of which one cannot possibly be deprived. 

Ill 

IT may seem to you that life would be very mo- 
notonous, if all were good in the same way, and that 
one might as well die of disease as to be bored to 
death by the then dull excellencies of his friends ; 
but you do not suppose that the Mind Divine, with 
its Universal occupation, though with its perfect, 
and so changeless, thought, is ever dull. Human 
success might move one to desire extinction, but — 
has anyone ever known that full experience in him- 
self for which a complete human success could be 



ij2 The Hidden Treasure 

honestly certified? As the human creature can view 
his mentality only in isolation, another cannot, 
from merely viewing his exterior, say with any cer- 
tainty what his mental imagery may be. And if one 
is not analytically inclined, but gives his life 
thoughtfully to the good within himself, he will nat- 
urally enough decide that another's mentality is also 
occupied with desiring good. Judging man from his 
personal expression of life, it can then be seen that 
no one is competent to decide against good as an 
all-occupying, all-absorbing interest. You yourself 
are not so anthropomorphically inclined, either men- 
tally or manifestly, as to believe that the best case 
of abstention from evil you have ever known has 
fully demonstrated that Heaven's active Good fun- 
damentally resembles its imagery. You may some- 
times appear to believe that God is the image of 
vacillating humanity, yet you have not gone so far or 
the anthropomorphic journey as to believe that you 
have seen absolute Good humanly demonstrated. 
Nevertheless, every day you can see this Good 
demonstrated ; but you will first have to see its 
demonstration in yourself, and to see it completely 
unconscious of the human ego, when you will be 
able to see it in everything and in every one in the 
same demonstrable way. 



You 173 



IV 



YOU complain that your friend has changed. It 
is impossible, you aver, to sit down to a nice gos- 
sipy chat with such perfection as his. That he is 
genuine in his feeling, you are sure, but, alas, the 
change ! Evidently he has effectually disposed of 
all his previous interest in morbid subjects. He 
complains of nothing personal to himself, while his 
chief interest in you is shown by his attempts to 
convert you to his own impersonal mode of thought. 
But you aver that you are interested in the troubles 
of your friends ; that you like to know exactly how 
and where they suffer. You insist perhaps that his is 
not a communicable knowledge, and that you expect 
something more tangible from friendship than an in- 
terest in your happiness, although your friend should 
see that yours is the most difficult position to occupy 
under the sun : that your sensitiveness is more re- 
fined than others ; that the persecution you suffer 
from others could never have been the impish award 
of another ; that friendship betrays you often; and 
that your suffering is the quintessence of all suffer- 
ing. And this impersonal friend listens to, but is 
unmoved by, your tale, perhaps finally to assure 
you that he once believed the story you are telling 
him to be his own story of life, and that he believes 
your human experience to be by no means unique. 
He is willing, however, to help you to regain your 



ij4 The Hidden Treasure 

mental poise, and so you frequently seek his help, 
especially when you find that your place in life ap- 
pears too tight a fit. You believe that he can help 
you — that he should help you ; for what is such an 
impersonal life good for if it is not ready to sacrifice 
itself to the personality of others? You probably 
find it rather difficult to overcome your belief that 
good should gladly sacrifice itself to evil, and in this 
belief you are not unusual. Did not the Serpent 
exact this of Adam and Eve ? And did not Cain 
demand it of Abel's life? Yet Good kept its integ- 
rity ; walked in its Garden whole, and still walks 
in its Garden conscious only of the forthspringing 
joy of Life. 

The one who confesses to having found a resting- 
place in Truth's absolute place is a very convenient 
friend whenever you wish him to put such precepts 
into a vicarious practice on your own account. At 
other times you are inclined to believe that you 
have submitted to his dominance in some manner, 
and this belief provokes some resentment. He may 
be right, you perhaps say, but you would evidently 
preferably believe that he is not always so ; for his 
attitude makes you feel when things go awry with 
you that you had better have followed along his 
line ; at least, have made a few attempts at it, so as 
to have tested the virtue of his method at a few 
points yourself. Not that you would choose to be 
considered eccentric by your friends and casual 



You 775 

acquaintances. Eccentricity denotes bad form. The 
points where consecration and eccentricity differ are 
not exactly clear to you. The more strongly one's 
personal characteristics are accentuated, the larger 
is "queer" writ over him. Even the distinctions 
of life, stated in definite terms, were at the start 
involved in risk, for are they not due to differences, 
to singularities, of expression? What the precise 
line of demarcation is which marks the way of a 
genius, has any one made this clear? There are a 
great many questions suggesting life as a riddle, in 
one form or another, and so there will be while there 
are any interested to discuss them ; moreover, to 
such questions you have probably given much atten- 
tion, not only in this phase of existence which you 
number by so many years, but it is more than likely 
that kindred questions have claimed your attention 
through aeons of time. You do not know this to be 
so, but have sometimes felt that you were old when 
you started your present plane of consciousness, and 
that your fancies and your proclivities as a child 
needed explaining, as something then seemed to 
open and close intermittently in your memory, which 
memory the environment whereinto you entered 
seemed gradually to obscure and efface. 



iy6 The Hidden Treasure 



YOU have perhaps suggested to others much about 
yourself which is derogatory to you, and which has 
returned to you that which causes you to distrust 
yourself. You believe that people think ill of you 
— think that you are of little consequence in life — 
and that they prefer others before you because of 
virtues they possess which are not so apparent in 
you, although you are sure that you have as much 
natural ability ; but you envy the favored, and 
believe that their life is easier, that they have fewer 
temptations, and are better endowed with pleasing 
manners to win the friendship of others, than you. 
But your envy and suspicion give you an unpleasing 
appearance, and prevent your showing your natural 
ability. If you have some knowledge of the power 
of Thought, but are spiritually indolent, then per- 
haps you suspect others of addressing your thought 
to harm you, to cause you or your friends suffering, 
to deprive you of your natural support, and to 
thwart you in the most of your undertakings. You 
should, however, always remember the Power with 
which your Thought is naturally invested, and hold 
yourself responsible for what you have in Life. 
Even supposing that others would wrong you by 
thinking evil about you, or by suggesting evil as 
coming directly to you, you should not have your 
hearing adjusted to a perverse, adverse government, 



You lyy 

but should instead be yourself positively adjusting 
your ear to a spiritual communion with the Host in 
the hosts, as well as manifesting that government 
which results in good only. You should know the 
absolute Power of true Thought, and so not weakly 
allow yourself to believe in any contrary power 
which can possibly govern you unhappily. There 
are seven words in the Pentateuchal account of the 
creation which are very impressive: "And God saw 
that it was good." What Spirit then saw was the 
result of this Power. Do you, then, see that it is 
good now. Begin as Spirit does with its own eternal 
Power, and then you will have only Spirit's Good 
to sustain you from any one. 

There is so much to say to you ! Some of you 
have understood how this Good eternally obtains in 
every one ; others of you, obviously, but dimly 
perceive this Good ; many of you infer that the 
constant application of Thought in the right direction 
is wearisome, but this is solely because you have 
never really applied your thought to the things of 
Life spiritually ; and the most of you have not yet 
given your attention seriously enough to know what 
happiness might be yours were you to do so. So 
far your efforts have been chiefly applied to har- 
monizing Truth to error's plane. That you have 
not succeeded need not astonish you. There is a 
revelation for you whenever you are ready for it. 
You will note first what seems to you the wonders 



iy8 The Hidden Treasure 

of Mind. You have sometimes recognized your 
friends by their different odors. Perhaps in the 
same way you have remembered those who were 
inimical to your interest. So you will know when 
they are thinking of you, as their respective odors 
will then pervade your nostrils. When they are 
bearing you in unpleasant remembrance you will 
note the external fluttering in your ear, the vibration 
of a thought at variance with itself, but when they 
are carrying you in their love you will feel the 
strength of their love pulsating in your heart, and 
hallowing your thought with a tender peace. Never- 
theless, you will need to agree consciously with 
your divine mentality in order to take the first step 
towards that Knowledge which secures to you the 
Field of the Hidden Treasure, and which, therefore, 
will prevent every sort of personal infliction, coming 
from yourself or from others. 



VI 

NEVERTHELESS, you have always suspected that 
you were leaving undone the real work of Life ; for 
the work upon which you were engaged often 
seemed stealing your moment from that which 
requires your present devotion. You have believed 
that you were restricted in your moment, in your 
means, in your ability, in your intelligence, but you 
have not known that this sense of lack was induced 



You iyg 

by your attempt at measuring Life personally, a 
task impossible of success. Your prospect mentally 
covered a wide field, but you contracted it intro- 
spectively by accepting some outward design as a 
guide to follow even while admitting its limitations. 
Probably in your early youth you looked the world 
over with ages-old sight, while the experiences of 
others, aided by your own, kept you disheartened 
into believing yourself the image of a world-weary 
humanity, when you should have known yourself 
the perfect image of the ever-present Spirit instead. 
You have constrained yourself to do much which 
was distasteful to you, and which was not at all in 
harmony with your moral sense. The unmorality 
of human life has laid its restraining hand upon you, 
and you have failed to shake it off. The moral 
lettering of a provisional law, uttering itself from a 
false-conception of life, has, nevertheless, lain like a 
dead child within you, seeming to affect much that 
you have seen with its wretchedly pervasive odor, 
as if it filled your world for you ; has lain dead, yet 
has been kept in the nostrils of men and women as 
an evil breath because of its suggestions of unwhole- 
someness and unholiness as the possible desire of 
man. For whoever looks upon this letter as a 
righteous guide to a holy life will of necessity be 
reminded, by his fear, of that which is forbidden 
throughout human life. Certainly that could be 
inferred of this Law which its self-proclamation 



180 The Hidden Treasure 

more than implies, "I both create and destroy. " 
For certainly, all that which is forbidden by this 
Law comprises the sum-total of human life, and, 
therefore, whoever keeps it absolutely will never- 
more know its conditions ; for to remember its con- 
ditions is to recreate the human sense of life, thereby 
to forget the divine. 

You have supposed that two ways were open to 
your choice — the divine and the human — yet you 
have always really known that there could be but 
one. However, this belief has apparently possessed 
you because you have supposed it impossible to live 
the divine Life entirely to-day. Still you are sure 
that the real Life of every one is that Life which 
Spirit gives. Nevertheless, you have implied by 
your mode of living that it was your privilege to do 
as you chose ; to abstain altogether from the true 
communion with Life if you chose ; or to be wholly 
ignorant of your spiritual Life while accepting an 
opposing sense of Life as natural, since it seemed to 
you an easier way to live. So have you enforced 
your negativeness as Life ; for the claims of negative 
being call for great exertion. There are so many 
things to resist, temptations to other than a pleas- 
urable waste of one's moment, while the price of 
resistance is still to be paid for in the old sacrificial 
way — with the fleshly mind suffering all that fear 
can conceive. 

So while you were saying that you were free to 



You 181 

be as negative as you pleased, you have found no 
pleasure in your choice. Reversely, you have found 
that you were binding yourself by an untruth, as you 
were always aware of something present within 
which called not infrequently for a positive state- 
ment of Life from you — a something that you per- 
haps frequently construed as a premonition of your 
earthly passing, as a suggestion that you would soon 
be called upon to attend to affairs other-where ; a 
symptom which your physician probably imputed to 
indigestion, and which I should ascribe to your fail- 
ure to absorb your heavenly Bread understandingly. 
So your inattention to the Universal Good in your 
life did not permit that repose of your faculties which 
you expected to result from their disuse, and so you 
missed the strength which comes naturally to one 
from an always alert spiritual rectitude of purpose. 
But somehow, from some reminding source, you are, 
and always have been, made aware of your unity 
with the eternal verities of Life, and, therefore, you 
have never seemed so detached that they did not 
show you their essential right to your whole being. 
For you were not so benumbed by your negative- 
ness as not to be, at least partially, conscious of an 
absolute call to resurrect your thought at once to its 
true mental plane. 



INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE 

I 

THE memoirs of men, both the great and the 
small, have an engrossing interest for some readers. 
The imagination feeds upon the egotism as well as 
upon the subtler traits of character opened for pub- 
lic inspection by the writer. But the whole self can 
never be unfolded to others by such incoherent rec- 
ords of memory. Often the personal atmosphere 
pervading the record is undesirable to the writer, 
yet so clings to the narrative as to seem coherent 
with his individuality. Whoever writes concerning 
Absolute Truth, however, is aware that the per- 
sonal ego can readily become a hindrance to the 
desired success of his work. Yet without his indi- 
vidual experience, his work as a transcriber would 
fall short of spiritual effect because of its lifeless- 
ness. Even with a wide experience, both as disci- 
ple and demonstrator, if the written word does not 
portray individual feeling, — although it may be, 
according to the writer's present ability, a faithful 
statement of what Truth is to him, — the writer can 
only express an abstract knowledge of a life apart 
from those whom he may be truly desirous of help- 



Individual Experience 183 

ing. The sincerely compassionate soul of any man 
or woman sets a stern task for itself when, with the 
first glimmering of the true Light, it seeks to restore 
the poise of its individuality by a personal self-ef- 
facement. The heretofore queer admixture of motes 
and beams proves more volatile than it at first ap- 
peared, although nothing of its quality enters into 
the real atmosphere of Life for the true thinker. So 
however his word or his work may appear to others, 
he should be constantly aware himself that the un- 
divided spiritual Whole has his thought in its per- 
fect keeping, and faithfully remember his own 
responsibility to the individual in every one, and, 
moreover, remember to be grateful to each one for 
the present angelic ministry of every one's innate 
consciousness — one's natural Thought. 



II 

We recall the fact that the memories of Jesus the 
Christ are of the individual kind. He wrote them 
absolutely, and therefore fearlessly, with his Life's 
blood within the heart of every one, — even within 
the most obdurate heart, since such a heart could 
not pulsate without Spirit's love, — and he wrote this 
not only for men of that day, but for man through 
every generation to come, until the needs of the 
ages should be obliterated by the real understanding 
of Soul, when generation shali cease. All there can 



184 The Hidden Treasure 

possibly be of a past he recorded for every one, 
being the representative of the creature as well as 
Heaven's representative. For on account of being 
Heaven's representative, he likewise represented 
Heaven's creation. So this statement, " Before 
Abraham was, I am," records a fact which should be 
of infinite interest to us all. It sufficiently records 
every one's beginning. And this statement, with 
its solemn import, his faithful scribe, the loving 
John, recorded for us. Each sentence of the Master 
is alight with a divine message for every child of 
Heaven. He was not a mere drooling preacher de- 
sirous only of retaining his temporal charge. All 
the things of earth and heaven came within the 
scope of his observation, while for him it is evident 
that the heavenly fire within him purified the things 
he saw of all their obvious dross. Certainly the 
ministry of Christ, as Jesus' scribes have presented 
it to us, proves that the disciples themselves were 
governed by no feeble sentiment concerning Chris- 
tian living. Their remembrance of his words and 
acts was embodied through their thought, not only 
by their appreciation of his work but also by their 
understanding of the living flame, which we prefer 
to feel as the Divine Essence within us, and which 
they faithfully tried to interpret both by speaking of 
it to their friends and by demonstrating it to the 
needy. All who later joined their ranks saw for 
themselves that, to the disciples, Life called for 



Individual Experience 185 

action as well as speech ; that to be the mere like- 
ness of the Preacher, — merely to preach that life as 
man obviously lived it habitually was vain, and, 
therefore, that life held nothing for man's comfort, 
— was not to represent the whole of knowledge. For 
they taught that were life lived in this vain way, it 
would only continue the vanity of both ways and 
means in one's existence. 

Therefore Heaven shone even through the World 
of Appearances for these disciples of the Holy Spirit. 
They were converts of the Master, so theirs was not 
a languid spiritual interest. Moreover, they had 
doubtless learned the precise manner whereby their 
personal sense of things had often carried them to, 
and kept them long at, the foot of the cross. Too 
often had there appeared an ego the product of bread 
other than divine ; a thing that seemed to have eyes 
which saw with the serpent's discriminating acute- 
ness of vision. Paul, who had seen the Christ only 
in a spiritual vision, bemoaned the personal sense 
embodying itself in flesh as undesirable, although 
not to be dismissed at the mere bidding of the per- 
sonal will. Yet his story is best written by himself 
in the self-absorption of his communion with Christ 
in his work. Certainly his was a great work, al- 
though it has been believed that he would have been 
less aware of suffering a human sense to obtain with 
him had he voiced it less. Nevertheless, each one 
who relies on the Spirit as the absolute, and there- 



1 86 The Hidden Treasure 

fore only, Source of his strength and power will 
understand Paul's grievance from knowing himself 
how difficult it sometimes seems not to magnify it 
as one's own. Possibly, too, Paul occasionally re- 
ferred to some such experience believing that it 
would encourage others to maintain their spiritual 
standpoint when the human bondage did not imme- 
diately loosen its fetters at their bidding. I believe 
that he wrote of his obvious trials only for the pur- 
pose of teaching his followers that there could be no 
emancipation possible from the enslaving of the 
fleshly mind except directly through the Divine 
Mind — the Spirit in Christ, and therefore except 
through the Christ-mind, which is the Holy Spirit 
— the whole Spirit. 



Ill 

SOME of my fellow-workers will understand me 
as I write of these experiences. Their own knowl- 
edge will also have been derived from that which 
has appeared as either the success or failure result- 
ing from their active work in the Field of Applied 
Thought — from their understanding of the whys 
and wherefores of each result. At least those will 
who have not debarred themselves by yielding to 
discouragements, and so have not sought by-paths 
to the heavenly Way, places of human detention 
where one, dozing, is reminded less of the need of 



Individual Experience 187 

individual action for a while, and so less of the need 
of calling upon the Name of the Absolute One for 
the Absolute Power. Truth does its work so quietly 
through one that one's thought at present often 
seems too slow to comprehend that the work is 
really being done. Yet it may be that we who are 
trying to work simply are less simple in our deal- 
ings with Life than we claim. It may be, too, that 
we somewhat resemble the Seven Sleepers of Ephe- 
sus who slept when the Pagans were persecuting 
the Christians, but opened their eyes when the 
Christians were persecuting the Pagans. For we 
may appear to see the defects of others while failing 
to see our own. It may be assumed that this course 
is natural, but it is only personally so. Never will 
it be natural spiritually — impersonally. From my 
own experience I have learned that it requires but a 
brief moment for the genuine worker, the one with 
a real heart-interest in one's self, to understand that 
one ought to view all others in the same absolute 
Light as one views one's self, — ought to view all 
others as one's self unless one sees a vast deal to 
trouble one in one's self, when it would be better to 
view the spiritual increase of another ; to view that 
which comes directly from the Spirit through every 
one, whatever any one may claim for himself, than 
to focus one's sight upon the lack of spiritual in- 
crease in one's self. 



1 88 The Hidden Treasure 

IV 

Saul OF TARSUS was the antithesis of Jesus the 
Christ, yet, as always with the human paradox, 
there was evidence of the analogue, since each 
earnestly proclaimed God as the Universal Power, 
although in a widely differing manner. Saul was 
the right kind of a man according to his light. He 
possessed all the sturdy virtues essential to the pro- 
mulgation of his dogma, even to the subtlety per- 
vading every shade of argument. He persecuted 
the Christians for conscience' sake while claiming 
for this atrocity the divine authority, a pernicious 
example, surely, yet an act which has been fre- 
quently repeated, even to the present day ; but of 
such practice it should not be said that he has been 
followed as an example, since Saul as Paul is prob- 
ably not remembered as an instigator of such persecu- 
tion. Later, doubtless, Paul did not find it easy to 
forget his former religious aggressiveness, and, for 
this reason, it may have seemed somewhat difficult to 
accept this inflow of the spiritual Nature of the all- 
powerful, though unresisting, Christ without some 
admission of a counter-spirit to subdue. He perhaps 
felt the need of some opposition which would better 
enable him to prefigure the spiritual armor that he 
should wear invisibly as his soul's panoply of war, 
even though Heaven knew no battle-ground, no ar- 
raying of opposing factions. Nevertheless, Paul 



Individual Experience i8g 

knew himself called to the stiffest, sternest up- 
rightness that his inner man had ever known. The 
Word had come to his ear as the foreword of Truth. 
He felt himself, therefore, enrolled in the vanguard 
of a spiritual army, with Jesus the Christ as the 
leader of the heavenly hosts. 

To the Jews he was an apostate, yet Paul was 
not alarmed by the numerical strength of this enemy. 
The enemy of Truth that Paul most dreaded was the 
personal weakness of man. For any one who is 
living his life personally has the foe incarnate ready 
to slay him again and again ; to slip him from one 
phase of consciousness into another, while subtly 
veiling his vision so that he can see only his own 
present isolation. This foe then proceeds to involve 
one in one's thought-world so that one never seems 
quite articulate ; to corrupt his true sense of Self 
into a false conception of everything concerning 
Life ; to bribe him occasionally with pleasure, but 
far oftener to suggest personal suffering. This Paul 
taught while demonstrating the Power of Christ ; 
and the angels went with him to open his prison 
doors, doors which his fears would have kept locked, 
and led him alight with Truth to light the true way 
for others. 

Paul was not afraid of friendship's ostracism. He 
rejoiced in being to others the pioneer of what was 
absolutely true, even if he was to most nothing 
more than a mad follower of the crucified " Naza- 



i go The Hidden Treasure 

rene." But PauPs soul was all aflame. It would 
have left him nothing but charred remains had he 
not been faithful to its Light. There are many- 
spiritual workers who have had some fellowship 
with Paul's experience. One need not trust to the 
ages to change the personal nature of humanity ; 
but, fortunately, the individual Nature never changes. 
When friends pass one coldly by, with the former 
lovelight apparently quenched by the condemning 
glance, what vanity there is in one is placed on the 
rack. And this, my friends, some of us have 
known. Were this the final finish of vanity in us, 
all would be well. For to dwell within the confines 
of the Limbo of Vanity is to suffer from the con- 
tracting quarters frequently furnished by some cruel 
inquisition ; at its best it appears the place barest 
of comfort. 

But to spend one's day inviting martyrdom is to 
dissipate one's energy. Therefore, instead of wast- 
ing one's self on self-pity, one should realize the 
ability of one's spiritually-awake faculties for help- 
ing others. New converts are usually carried by 
the heavenly passion, else they are but the sorry 
victims of slow Reason. May I always be a new 
convert, repeatedly pray I. So, in the beginning, 
when I was frequently told that the lack of success 
in what I at that period regarded as my chosen field 
of demonstration — that of healing others — would 
lead to my arrest, the threat only served to establish 



Individual Experience 191 

me more firmly in my conviction. Still, I would not 
go on record as a justifier of persecution, but I am 
deeply grateful to my Soul-consciousness that I had 
the willingness to stand despite all opposition, 
friendly or not, and that whatever came to me that 
early in my work came to me surely as a spiritual 
aid, thereby enabling me to be true to my convic- 
tion, and so to stand without conceding a point 
either to my own fears or to my friends' fears for 
me. Because of this early experience, I am confi- 
dent that I have been proportionately fearless when 
helping others to stand for a Sign of the Life eter- 
nally within them. 

Even the educated mental methods of those who 
were confessedly my foes, confessedly by the advo- 
cating and the enforcing of methods which would 
ordinarily be regarded as adverse to my interest 
in every conceivable way, — were humanity so 
unfortunate as to be educated to such a question- 
able display of knowledge, — have been an un- 
doubted spiritual aid to me, since 1 have learned 
from all such efforts directed against me to be more 
consciously one with my true Nature. As this word 
is written with the trust that it may help many, I 
am giving a little of my experience thus explicitly. 
For one's own thought is really his fortress while he 
is trusting himself in the open field of Infinite Love. 
My friends have been among the tender and true of 
Spirit's children ; yet my friends might have weak- 



/p2 The Hidden Treasure 

ened me by their devotion to me as a helpful person- 
age, whereas my foes have probably strengthened 
me by their detestation of what they chose to regard 
as my personality. For this reason, I can truly say 
of those who obviously have not preferably seen me 
as a child of Light, that I have felt God's love to be 
absolutely mine, and brought to me by every one 
of them. I comprehend perfectly that the only 
Power any one can have is that which comes, is 
ever flowing in, from the Almighty. I know that 
whenever another's will directs his thought to me 
that the angels bring it sped by the Almighty's love 
of Self in me; that each comes to me with a mes- 
sage which concerns only the Soul's perfection ; and 
that each comes as the fresh morning light with a 
renewed sense of Being for me. I desire to retain 
only a sense of the living, loving, glad abundance 
of the Christ-being in my soul. So I am as grateful 
to my enemies as to my friends for their faithful 
work with me. And that it may be as blessed in 
themselves as it surely is in me is the all-loving 
desire of my heart. For I remember that in Spirit 
we are neither friendly nor inimical one to another ; 
we are simply one in the individual heart-interest. 

Now I do not regard the preceding paragraphs as 
a personal confession of strength accruing in my 
life under great difficulties. For I only allude to this 
experience that I may thereby stimulate others to a 
similar comprehension of their power to dissipate all 



Individual Experience 193 

that which appears miscreate, so to strengthen them 
during periods which might otherwise prove despair- 
ing because of humanity's severe tests. I certainly 
allude to such experiences only because I am so 
often asked to rescue others from fears induced, as 
they believe, by an adverse mental influence. 
There are really no difficulties whenever one fully 
realizes that that which might seem an obstacle, 
and which might from its malignant appearance 
overwhelm one with a fatal fright, can be instantly 
converted into a heavenly guide which will happily 
transport one from fear to faith, when, with this 
true conversion, comes not the make-believe tran- 
quility of the stoic, the merest pretence of a soul 
all-serene, but a genuine content, and such a glorious 
knowledge of inner power as makes the thought a 
joy too great for the human tongue to express, for 
the human hand to convey, through the only obvious 
vehicle it has — a feeble language. Probably many 
have often felt like spiritually acclaiming words of 
similar import to these : 

" But gracious God ! how well dost Thou provide 
For erring judgments an unerring guide ! " 

So one can live rejoicing every moment of the 
day, voicing one's gladness with the language of 
Soul, which is the natural speech of every one, and 
so live with a comprehension of how the perfect 



ig4 The Hidden Treasure 

equipment of all to work with one in the only way 
which is good for all is being exercised in one's 
behalf. Could I then believe the work done in the 
present moment other than heavenly when I so well 
know that every one is working within me with 
the integrity of the spiritual Purpose ? That the 
heavenly legions are watching with me from the 
Heart of my Soul, — the place where Spirit eternally 
dwells watching, — to carry with me nothing more 
burdensome than the righteous hour in the Life of 
every one? But if the words that Intellect uses in 
its argument within itself, — words relating to the 
conflict between the pros and cons of its discursive 
being, — cannot tell the story of Life as the spiritual 
worker knows it, as every earnest heart feels it, I 
do know this, that the quickness of the Infinite 
Mind through me, if I but feel its directness through 
another's thought of Life also, will do the work he 
desires done — if he will but heed the Word of 
Spirit. How easy it seems to find the words for the 
human story ! That life believed strenuous invokes 
its altar and evokes therefrom battling terms, which 
sinuously glide along like brilliant lightning. But 
Truth, ah Truth, requires Heaven's comprehension 
for its expression, for its understanding, and can 
only be fully told in the Heavenly Silence. It, 
therefore, requires all there is of every one — far 
more than appears in any one — to reveal its glory 
through the spiritual animation of a consecrated 



Individual Experience 195 

friendship ; and then on, through all that which 
obtains as a World of Appearances, it disseminates 
itself, even from the heart of the littlest one who 
desires to be the incorruptible manifestation of 
Heaven. 

This Word lays bare the heart of man, but it 
should bare one's heart only to the perfection of 
Truth. For Truth, the Holy Spirit, that which never 
saw untruth in its increate Being, clothes the heart of 
man with a radiating tenderness from itself, — the 
flower of grace unconscious of pity because of hav- 
ing no knowledge of anything calling for pity, — 
that which nourishes one's heart with the Bread 
that leaves one eager for its supply, and which 
strengthens one from the Life Everlasting in the 
Life of To-day. All this I know. And 1 furthermore 
know that one cannot turn from the Mind thus man- 
ifested to a mentality obviously denying itself a 
happy expression and, meanwhile, feel what both 
Jew and Christian have termed the Living God. 
My hour of meditation should, therefore, prove my 
hour of contemplation during which I behold the 
glory of Spirit showing itself through its living things 
everywhere, and, therefore, showing itself univer- 
sally ; and the glory of this manifestation I should 
view shining from my own consciousness forever. 
The remotest confines of earth and heaven should 
be gathered by the infinite sense of Being in my 
heart until all becomes consciously mine to love and 



iq6 The Hidden Treasure 

cherish always ; and the Perception of this must be 
to me the living Thought fully conscious of holding 
all within itself. My knowledge should not prove 
itself merely some vain figure of fancy, if I would 
realize my Heaven. So my vision must be to me 
that which is positive enough, and so free and clear 
enough, to view that Substance of things which is 
incapable of dissolution, and not merely a feeble 
sight which is easily satisfied with posing an ideal — 
with posing the dream of a visionary. 

If I am for an instant tempted to see that which is 
unlovely in another, I must quickly turn to my 
resourceful Thought, resourceful because it acknowl- 
edges its supply from the unfailing Source, and feel 
it all alight with the beautiful Light which is like a 
burning flame, as this flame purifies all the dross 
which appears if one for a single instant fails to 
keep his own thought alert. I have no spiritual 
right to see unloveliness in any one, or to leave it 
for others to see, until I have first paid my tribute 
to the true Soul-thought of the individual who is 
evidently finding it difficult, without some angelic 
help, to rouse himself from the obsessing claim of 
an illusive sense of being. 



Apparently, the real work that one leaves undone 
is inimical to one's interest ; and apparently^ what- 
ever one has struggled with hopelessly to overcome 



Individual Experience^ igy 

in another may also help to fasten conditional claims 
upon the other, and upon one's self also. This I 
have learned from experience. Nevertheless, the 
watchfulness due the moment is not such an onerous 
service as it perhaps seems ; for the devotion essen- 
tial to a spiritual faithfulness should never prove the 
sacrifice that it seems to one who would perhaps be 
readier himself to do a similar work if he were not 
to believe that there would be so much for him to 
forsake, and nothing tangible left wherewith to 
replace former interests. Such caution is unwise, 
for there is always the spiritual atmosphere to both 
centralize and enwrap one, so to radiate through one 
its rest and self-possession, with that consciousness 
of universal sentiency which speaks with the voice 
of friendship, and which knows the world of one's 
inner thought to be the increate Universe imaging 
the Holy Spirit forever. The impermanent sense of 
life that one had attached to all that represents the 
natural and tangible, while one had been erroneously 
regarding the fleeting tangibility of all substance, — 
a point of view which would account for much 
unhappiness, — now vanishes; for there lives in 
one's thought eternally the blessed vision of one's 
all in Life, the whole real world established in Light, 
from which not a single friend can depart to leave 
one lonely and sick with a desolating anguish — to 
leave one with only a partial interest in one's asso- 
ciation with the friends who are left. 



ig8 The Hidden Treasure 

Certainly one does not need to strain the sight of 
this Mind in order to pierce beyond the indefinite- 
ness of a present into the vagueness of a future. 
There is no need to waste the preciousness of one's 
moment by declaring against the power of illusion 
when one knows that his wholesome self-application 
to this Presence within him, from which he desires 
to have comfort and rest, and every good that he 
now interprets his own eternally, dispels every 
shadow, every heart-ache. I know this to be the 
happy, natural result in my life while I am con- 
stantly devoting my thought to the spiritual nature 
of man — the only Nature of the Universe. I have 
learned, moreover, that, although I may desire with 
fervent desire to give my knowledge to every one, 
each individual must know Life for himself ; and 
that he will regard Life from the precise measure- 
ment that he gives it ; for true Knowledge is 
consciously begotten within one only by one's re- 
sponding one's self to its Source. In this manner is 
one begotten only of God — God-begotten only. I 
have learned that Heaven is really the afflatus of 
the Divine Will, and that for every one it shall be 
the same inspiring Will to enjoy, to live, — with 
which to manifest the increate hosts. I have called 
my Heaven the In-visible — the Inner Sight — but 
it is to me the Essence of the All-being, established, 
conserved, expressed by any term which can be 
construed as eternal — as the substance of enduring 



Individual Experience 199 

Love. As I gather my thought from moment to 
moment my conviction is deepened and strength- 
ened, and more consciously sustained. I have, there- 
fore, a more and more intelligent knowledge of how 
" the invisible things of God from the creation of 
the world are clearly seen, being perceived through 
the things that are made." There is consequently 
less and less of the sight of things as in a mirror 
darkly. I better know that there are no limitations 
devised by Spirit either within or around me, while 
the limitations of fleshly things, of materialism, ap- 
pear less and less contracting, less and less positive, 
in their dealings with me as I approach nearer and 
still nearer to the comprehension of Truth, Spirit. 
I understand so far as 1 express Truth, so far as I 
allow my real aim to be the acquirement of my spir- 
itual sight, my spiritual Life, how Spirit gives the 
increase without either enlarging its own field of 
action, or effecting one iota of change in its manifes- 
tation, which we term the creation. 

I have learned that the Might of Life is mine only 
from the natural spiritual discernment; that this 
Might is that which pervades my thought to renew 
and invigorate it by inspiring me to a desire only for 
its possession in the oneness of Spirit with all. I 
have also learned that the mere weighing and sifting 
of matters, which are expected to lead to great 
issues, are useless efforts unless I employ my spir- 
itual sense rather than a material discrimination ; 



200 The Hidden Treasure 

are useless efforts unless I am taking my stand un- 
selfishly so far as any personal self-consideration is 
concerned. If the work to be done appears for a 
human soul in torment, my thought must be already 
so consciously poised as to need no further prepara- 
tion, — no preparatory diverting of human interests, 
— before it shall be clean enough to touch the Di- 
vine Soul within him who is writhing in apparent 
dementia. 



VI 

HOW bitterly cruel are the fancies of humanity ! 
Weary, worn old humanity has dreamed so long of 
struggling that perhaps it would be kinder to attrib- 
ute what appears as mental laziness to a depletion 
of strength from having tried for so long to stand 
without any positive knowledge of a permanent 
foundation. Yet one cannot be kind to it without 
perpetuating it, without entering into its dream 
one's self. Therefore should one always look to 
the everlasting foundation of the All-being, even 
to the Holy Spirit, the Spirit increate, the Life 
increate of every one. This I know that I must 
faithfully do, and without posing further than I have 
mentally, spiritually, achieved. Like the Preacher, 
I have known the vanity of human strength, but 
now I must know the heavenly Might in my world 
of things. The subtleties of logic shall no longer 



Individual Experience 201 

mislead me. Personal interest shall not crucify me. 
I will so poise my love that it shall prove an unfail- 
ing strength to my nearest friend. To most it will 
not seem difficult to love one's dearest, but I have 
learned that the love which will not form a cross for 
me and mine is the selfsame love which we should 
as gladly give to all. There is a kind of love which 
seems spiked on a pivot for its devotee, and this 
pivot is the underlying anxiety which predestines 
the object of one's love as a sacrifice. The light of 
the whole Life is love, nevertheless. A poet sang 
truly : 

" The mind has a thousand eyes, 
And the heart but one ; 
Yet the light of the whole life dies 
When love is done." 

So love should not be expressed as one has known 
it through a feverish, anguished existence of fear, 
but, instead, as the Love Whose empire covers one 
infinitely, carries one blessed, is mantle, and light, 
and strength, because it includes the whole life of 
everyone in its boundless conception of Being, and 
because it can forsake no one, forget no one, since 
it unites the All-perception of Being in its own con- 
creteness as the Whole Eternal Self of the Universe. 
Love is begotten of Life, but neither Life nor Love 
was before the other. Still, merely to say this to 



202 The Hidden Treasure 

another has no effect upon him for good while the 
one saying it considers the truth of it as an abstrac- 
tion, and continues on his way critical concerning 
himself while hypercritically noting the weaknesses 
of his fellows. 

I know that I should gather the apparently vain 
things of life into concreteness, and light them with 
such love that this love shall prove itself the very 
flame of Heaven, and, so far as I have gone, I have 
not found this a difficult task but rather a happy 
manifestation of the Power with which I am natur- 
ally endowed with all others, unless I have for an 
instant allowed the human sense of things to usurp 
the heavenly sense for me. 

The logic of subtleties shall not govern me be- 
cause I know how quickly one is entrapped by pre- 
mises with time-sustained conclusions. I am now 
alluding to the obvious logic of human events : to 
the subtle extension of personality, and to the un- 
written data of the subliminal consciousness, as its 
dicta pervades the World of Appearances to counter- 
feit the Power of the true Word. One need not go 
outside the sensibilities, which appear as his own, 
to attest from experience to the weakness of that 
which would coerce him as mind were he not 
strongly resolved to abide intelligently conserved 
within the Eternal Verity of Life. Surely one can- 
not give living Truth to another unless one give it 
consciously alive from one's self. 



Individual Experience 203 

I have learned that I must always say, / know, 
positively, even if my positiveness challenges deri- 
sion. Emerson wrote, 

"Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer 
upright; he dares not say, M think/ ' I am/ but 
quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before 
the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses 
under my window make no reference to former roses 
or to better ones ; they are for what they are ; they 
exist with God to-day/ ' 

Do you know this interpretation of an Arabian 
proverb, " Men are Four " ? 

" The man who knows that he knows not aught — 

He is a fool ; no light shall ever reach him. 
Who knows he knows not, and would fain be taught — 

He is but simple; take thou him and teach him. 
But whoso knowing, knows not that he knows — 

He is asleep ; go thou to him and wake him. 
The truly wise both knows, and knows he knows — 

Cleave thou to him and nevermore forsake him." 

I know that the Light which is increate can never 
go out ; and that this Light may also be termed the 
Life, the Power, the Sight, the Hearing, the Feeling. 
Yet, however this Light may be termed, I am per- 
fectly sure that it is now, and will be eternally, in 
me, and that it can be useful to me only from my 
absolute certainty of its Presence ever glowing 
within me. 



THE SENTIENCY OF ATMOSPHERE 

IS there any one so unhappily self-involved that 
he has not felt the atmospheric charm of blending 
tree and grass and shrub with the shimmering sky 
overhead, on a June day, and his soul succumbing 
to the gentle thrall of a sylvan will which drew him 
almost to the point of surrender ? With the sunlight 
percolating through spreading branches and glisten- 
ing on grass and leaf of shrub and tree, has there 
not been felt the spell of something without eyes, 
without ears, without speech, which wooed one to an 
absorption of his sense, his life, his very soul into 
sylvan being, into the vegetating compass of exist- 
ence ? Even the odors appeared to absorb one, and 
to deepen the enchantment of one's senses. This 
atmosphere was so absorbingly apparent, although 
invisible as a unit, as to remove every doubt one 
had perhaps hitherto entertained concerning its sen- 
sibility, and as to efface entirely one's previous 
belief in an insensate form of creation. Near by a 
river was singing its happy love-song as it went flu- 
ently its own beloved way, tenderly aware of its 
union with the mighty ocean whereunto it returned 
the water gathered from the heavens, water which 
was again to be its own circulating stream of sing- 



The Sentiency of Atmosphere 205 

ing love. And with this river all-nature was 
singing its lullaby of apparent content, a strain of 
tenderness which soothed one into passivity, into 
that submission of the senses which left one uncon- 
cerned as to the momentum of things in his life, and, 
while the spell lasted, left him without the con- 
sciousness of purpose, or of any need of any indi- 
vidual decision. The irresistible witchery of a subtle 
atmospheric environment, languorous yet appealing, 
thus seemed to hold one's faculties captive to a sen- 
suousness devoid of every quality of passion. Dur- 
ing the moment of self-abandonment, one was not 
conscious of any personal interest active enough to 
urge his will to a single selfish effort. His energy 
seemed dormant, or else to have been dissipated 
when he yielded to the sweet dominion of what was 
to him some immaterial anodyne, amorphous in its 
nature. The hum of the insects blended, a mono- 
tone, in his ear, and the sweet trilling of the birds, 
as they flitted from branch to branch and on to tree- 
top, all added to the harmonious effect. 

But every season of enchantment has its intellect- 
ual limitations. The earth, like the angel, looks to 
the east, while the shadows lengthen before the 
sun's farewell. Either the more stirring qualities of 
the human will, or else the tender interests of that 
which should be accounted all-divine, recall one's 
thought from its sylvan temptation to what to him 
must prove soulful activities, although he may have 



206 The Hidden Treasure 

learned from the extent of his yielding that there is 
a soul-power in every living thing, and although he 
may have heard only what he construes as its mys- 
tical teaching of the blessedness of universal con- 
tent. 

That, surely, is the wiser way of interpreting 
that nature which spreads itself as all out-doors. 
For all, obviously, do not succeed in fully arousing 
themselves, or else perhaps the woodland spirit en- 
tranced the child before the mother consciousness 
had offered it to the sunlight. In the country one 
is frequently reminded of the mythical fatherhood 
of gods. The spell of the land is upon some ; the 
spell of the sea upon others. The vastness of the 
sea overflows itself through tidal rivers, and so 
through river and sea it wooes men to a more inti- 
mate knowledge of its depths, until, noting all that, 
one is inclined to regard all previous legends concern- 
ing tributary streams as void, and to substitute some 
individual discovery anent the Ocean's sending forth 
these streams as emissaries to subjugate the will of 
man — to make him the Ocean's thrall — thereby 
to leave him only partially active. Only the con- 
tiguous land seems to hold some to a sanity which 
prevents an attempted confluence of man-soul with 
sea-soul. The sea urges ; the land restrains. But 
the man — spell-bound — is uncertain within which 
is the souFs hiding-place. 

Wherever one goes one can note both the tern- 



The Sentiency of Atmosphere 2oy 

porary reveling and a phase of thralldom in an ex- 
tended nature's devotees. They are few who have 
not felt the charm. From some hill-crest one looks 
forth upon a world of unutterable moment. "All 
this is thine ; come take it," is the alluring invita- 
tion. There is an air of tempting mystery pervad- 
ing this cosmic offering. Everything seems borne 
by invisible wings ; wherefore the wings of the morn- 
ing could bear one none too quickly into the heart 
of this gift. What is it that he shall take? 

He is instantly reminded of the Spirit of the hosts. 
Here is the Essence of the Everlasting revealing its 
embodiment to his heart. He looks upon far more 
than his physical sight can satisfactorily explain. 
The statement of the eternal Will he feels to be his 
centralizing Nature, and all else as the Unit of its 
exposition. Then all this is really his so that he can 
possess it ! Is his inner sight the power thus mov- 
ing through his vision for an effect not miraculous 
but always self-sustained? Is his true insight the 
Power — the real Power — of Life ? If so, then the 
transfiguration of the panoramic vision does not de- 
pend upon anything humanly obvious or subtle for 
some scientific climax, for it comes as the inner rev- 
elation of Spirit's inviolable Nature shining ever as 
the Light of all that hath been made. 

But try to express something of this conviction 
audibly to another who has looked all his life from 
some mountain village upon such familiar yet un- 



208 The Hidden Treasure 

familiar scenes as this, and he will sagely nod his 
acquiescence. His feeling responds to your state- 
ment, but his soul can express itself only silently. 
Laboring with a discrete mood, one's own animus 
seems more indefinite. Then, 4< All this will I give 
thee," bribes the tempter, while one, doubting, 
notes no tangible results. 

There is a solemnity of feeling, a hushed rever- 
ence, wrought in one by the simple atmosphere, 
whenever it is regarded for its own sake. The sun 
may be shining on fields unclothed with summer's 
verdure : the symbolic interpretation of Life, as the 
son of man views it, may have rotated to that point 
which bespeaks the final dissolution of that to which 
it had given birth consciously ; yet here his thought 
adverts to aboriginal nature as it reveals itself either 
through some pervading sensuousness, or through 
the true inner Nature as one withdraws his atten- 
tion from the haunts of men, from their struggles, 
and, therefore, from the vanity and vacuity and 
barrenness which has seemed to obsess his mental- 
ity. Within him is the Treasure of Life, yet scarcely 
revealed through his impermanent sense of vision, 
although ever ready to be expended through his 
intelligence, through his love, through his entire 
being, if he will only accept for his constant Mind 
that which contains the real Thought-treasure. 

The lonely mountaineer, having dreamed of a 
communion or communed with a dream, but having 



The Senticncy of Atmosphere 209 

felt through all his bewilderment of fancy that some- 
thing which makes Life desirable, that something 
which he knows cannot die, asks that the forsaken 
body may have its guardian grave as near as possi- 
ble to the place where the closed eyes first opened. 
Yet underlying all feeling is his soul's desire for 
Heaven's embracing love. 

In what appears Nature's solitude, the one who is 
truly attuned to real Nature hears the Voice offering 
everything that is necessary to Being if one is 
only ready to renounce all that is unnecessary. 
Nevertheless, one learns that not solely in seclusion, 
away from the haunts of men, is he to secure the 
Treasure of his soul. Over hill and valley, quicker 
than the sight of a bird on the wing, beyond the 
tree line of a wide area, it is revealed to him that he 
should bear some message to man that shall illumine 
his thought, that shall lessen the sense of personal 
enthrallment, and thereby quicken in man his con- 
sciously happy self-possession. " Let me go to re- 
deem my Treasure,' ' is the heart's appeal. It is 
like unto the response of old, "Here am I; send 
me!" 

The congregation of some wooded hilltop has per- 
haps proved itself ably imaging the angelic ministry 
of Christ. The body has not so much shown itself 
as has the Soul, yet something has embodied itself 
in one's heart which asks for expression, and will 
not be denied. " Go forth ! Return ! " is the com- 



210 The Hidden Treasure 

mand unuttered except as one's soul speaks within 
itself in its communion with the living things in the 
spiritually natural way, conscious of the heavenly 
legions sustaining it — of the Spirit sustaining the 
legions. For an inspiring communion has it been, 
and so it shall continue. 

" For ye shall go out with joy, 
And be led forth with peace ; 
The mountains and hills shall break forth before you into 

singing, 
And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands ! " 

Truly the Voice, irresistible when heard, will greet 
one with its heavenly discourse all the way. And 
the Way leads through the Field wherein the heav- 
enly Treasure was lost and is found, this Treasure 
to be redeemed by an understanding of the Power 
which keeps it concrete, that Power which is the 
SouPs understanding of itself. So it is not as hith- 
erto a casual glimpse, and then a search for more 
light so that the Way may be easier ; for although 
there had been a genuine pursuit for an acknowl- 
edged Treasure, yet in order to obtain it by means 
of such intermittent efforts, one has had not only to 
earn its price, but, while doing that, has no doubt 
paid the price of error also many times over — 
through many phases of consciousness, and through 
many misconceptions of birth and being. 

But now one has received Heaven's message pos- 



The Sentiency of Atmosphere 21 1 

itively, the message which strengthens the feeble 
pulse, which gladdens the sad heart, and which 
restores the wavering judgment to an uprightness 
and decision which are a guaranty for efforts having 
invaluable results. Beautiful, indeed, are the feet 
of him who continues to bring good tidings of good, 
and to publish that peace which is the salvation of 
one's sanity, and so of one's usefulness, working as 
it does now through the rejoicing of one's soul. 

That here, enshrined within his thought, is the 
Treasure of Conscious Divinity, those who can read 
the signs of such blessedness are absolutely aware. 
The Treasure is consciously his by right of pur- 
chase, or else he is earning its price by service. 
Whichever this may be, to the one whose sight is 
centred in some point illumined for him, the mes- 
senger holds the balance of Power within himself 
because of his poise of thought by Tightness of 
desire. Not that a little has satisfied one ; to pos- 
sess All is the spiritual aim, and so to possess it 
now by not denying its Presence. And this All — 
what is it like ? It is surely the Soul's heavenly 
expression in man inspired by the infinite Intelli- 
gence — the sole Way of Life, one has learned. It 
is the Way given before there was a firmament, 
before the stars gleamed and twinkled, and before 
the suns shed independent rays of their own. It 
was the Way when the Light was a Unit, and there 
was no rebellious man. And it was the Way before 



212 The Hidden Treasure 

the heart of man assumed a great grudge, because 
of grudging its universal service of love, and before 
it beat with a consciousness of judgment's severity 
instead of with the tranquility of heavenly Peace — 
Wisdom. 

The bearer -of good tidings has an atmosphere of 
his own, firm, inviting, tender, radiating from that 
Light " which never was on land or sea," or in the 
sky except as one's unfailing remembrance of it 
receives its Atmosphere from every hill and valley, 
from the sea and from every little stream, from the 
things of earth, and air, and sea ; except as one 
hears the Voice, inaudible to human sense, speaking 
through the eternal Nature of everything, and feels 
everything responding to this Voice. This Atmos- 
phere, however, is one which weaves no spells, 
does not enthrall the senses through a vegetable 
drowsiness, or beguile them into a delirium of 
animal spirits. It leaves the sense of man free for 
action, but free only through expression. Its radia- 
tion clarifies the sight. Every prophecy of good 
things to come when the things of the human will 
shall have ceased their complaining, lamenting, 
suffering, in death, is merely a promise, and nothing 
more. The true Atmosphere reveals Good at hand, 
immediate — one has only to rejoice and be gloriously 
glad. The dreary task of working out one's salva- 
tion from ages past, through a burdened present, 
and on through ages to come, is not divinely exacted 



The Sentiency of Atmosphere 213 

of us. For the imagery of the Soul from its incre- 
ate constancy is alive within the heart of man, ful- 
filling itself now as Heaven's Own Nature in every- 
thing. Let the heart, therefore, sing now its new, 
ever new, song of glorified gladness. Let every- 
where the Golden Child, the Christ Child, manifest 
itself as the universal image in all that is visible. 
Moreover, let all be visible. Let each one see his 
own nature enshrined in all Nature, and thus see 
his own completeness in the Wholeness of the Uni- 
versal. 

He who can hear the message revealing God's 
absolute love, can love all others also with this love. 
It is in this way that his own heart shall continue 
its song with the Infinite. And it is in this way 
that one shall feel his listening ear glorifying the 
imagery of Heaven because its imagery glorifies his 
whole Being. Did God in the beginning say, " I 
will create man in mine own image"? Certainly 
no amount of human self-esteem would grant man 
so much honor. But within man's heart, although 
man adjudges himself prone to err, and, for this rea- 
son, is frequently inclined to commit himself to the 
clemency of an upright Heaven, there is something, 
call it Spirit, call it Atmosphere, call it whatsoever 
one will, which is ever calling him to the perfect 
Way of Life, the Way which he feels, could he but 
find it, would give him ease, and an active useful 
peace. Moreover, were one to analyze his opinions 



214 The Hidden Treasure 

closely, he would doubtless say that it must be 
through the extinction of many wrong desires that 
his way shall open to perfection. 

One, nevertheless, perhaps continues to submit 
weakly to the foolish habits of what he tritely terms 
an earthly pilgrimage, affirming that he is bound to 
many of them because they were inherited, while 
his infinite inheritance of the divine imagery, in 
which he professes to believe, seems to have been 
lost through descent — remoteness — some ancestor 
perhaps having dissipated it. But the most foolish 
habit of all seems to be that of paying so much 
respect to the inevitableness of the human will- 
power, — of so readily yielding to weakness. The 
tendency to supineness of the human will makes a 
wretched foundation upon which to build ; but, 
fortunately for God's man, it is not the basis of his 
being. All pretence vanishes as one communes 
with Truth. For one's own sake, one lets the 
Light shine clearly through him, and, thus shining, 
the Treasure is revealed pure and holy. Hereafter 
it shall be his care and delight to possess it. But 
one has never seen it, has never known it, until he 
sees and realizes that it fills the whole world ; is as 
much all others as his own. He may dream that he 
has counterfeited it, but he is wide awake when he 
really sees it. Hidden it may seem to be, but of a 
certainty he knows now that it is as the Christ hid 
in God — as Spirit is the In-visible of its Universe. 



The Sentiency of Atmosphere 215 

Henceforth he will try with every act of his life 
to reveal it. During this moment of Life will he 
be steadfast, and trustful, and trustworthy. If one 
really lives in the only moment belonging to him, 
then he can surely be strong and interdependent. 
A radiation, strong in government, potent in direc- 
tion, carries one on to the true self-revealment, 
whenever he is ready for it. And this self-reveal- 
ment decides the moment for one. Not in it will 
one yield to folly, to inertia, to a quibbling argu- 
ment concerning what may possibly be good or bad 
for one. One could, apparently, expend himself in 
rejecting the undesirable — which will not stay 
denied while its creation is being acknowledged by 
its rejection. 

Yet right here, on what perhaps seems a mountain- 
top, from which Satan also, perhaps, seems to 
dazzle with a promise of glory, is Power proclaiming 
itself increate, and as the increate Life of every one, 
to be to one, therefore, that which renders him 
invincible because of his being conscious only of this 
Power which is natural to him. 



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